Rebecca Louise Law: Community. Image courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art.

Rebecca Louise Law’s immersive, site-specific floral installations have graced venues ranging from the British Royal Academy, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, and Times Square, where she thoroughly transforms spaces with canopies and garlands comprising flowers by the hundred-thousand.  Community, on view at the Toledo Art Museum, applies half a million floral elements that create a tangible lavender mist into which viewers can immerse themselves and disappear.  It looks (and smells) absolutely transcendent, but Law’s floral works– tranquil, serene, and undeniably beautiful—also manage to gently touch on the themes of community-building and environmental sustainability.

Rebecca Louise Law: Community. Image courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art.

This installation is her largest yet, ambitiously filling the TMA’s spacious Canaday Gallery with living flowers from Toledo and dried floral elements from each of her fifty-one previous works, some of which date back ten years.  In this regard, Community manages to serve as a sort of early-career retrospective.  Because of its immersive nature, perhaps even more so than most art, Law’s work must be experienced rather than seen.  Step into this other-worldly space and the flowers suspended from the ceiling seem to form a luminous cascade which—depending on your perspective in the room– alternates between thin translucent veils or a dense and opaque mist.

The 10,000 living flowers in the installation will—of course– inevitably die, but every element from each of Law’s installations is preserved and reincorporated into subsequent works; there’s absolutely nothing discarded.  She even preserves the dust that accumulates in her installations for use in future projects (she plans on working with it later this year during her forthcoming residency as a visiting artist at the TMA’s hot shop and glass pavilion).  So each element in Community will one day see new life in a future installation.  In this way, Law work obliquely addresses sustainability and pushes against unnecessary waste.

Rebecca Louise Law: Community. Image courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art.

 

The themes of community and bridge-building are also subtly present in her work, and in this installation in particular.  Here, dried plants and flowers from the UK entwine with living floral elements from the Toledo area.  And even the creation of this installation was a sort of community-building; volunteers from 19 organizations worked together for 1,800 cumulative hours to entwine the innumerable garlands that comprise this work.  Law states that one of the draws of the TMA as an exhibition venue in the first place was the museum’s many outreach programs that reach Toledo’s diverse demographics.

Portrait of artist Rebecca Louise Law. Rebecca Louise Law: Community. Image courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art.

 

Admittedly, it’s entirely possible that these subtle themes may elude many viewers who, like myself, enter the space only to find themselves lost in the moment; when was the last time any of us have walked through a veil of half a million flowers, after all?  But there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. TMA curator Halona Norton-Westbrook says that Law’s works serve as reminders to “look closely and appreciate the natural wonder that always surrounds us,” which is, undeniably, a perfectly worthy end in itself.

Viewers can see, smell, and experience Community at the Toledo Art Museum through January 13, 2019.

Chrysler Imperial Model CV Airflow Coupe, 1934. Photo: Peter Harholdt.
Courtesy of Miles Collier Collections @ the Revs Institute.

In 1909, at a time when automobiles were just starting to gain traction as a technology in society, an Italian poet named F. T. Marinetti penned “The Futurist Manifesto,” which recounts the excitement of a car accident as allegory to inspire a generation of artists to embrace the aesthetics of technology. And in turn, these artists inspired designers, architects, critics, engineers, and even politicians with their language of speed, danger, and mythological struggle. Thirty years later, the European continent was entering its second catastrophic war. Futurism didn’t survive these real-world dangers (and many of the Futurists themselves did not survive it, either). But the aesthetics of speed were already tied in to the shape and feel of our technology.

Material design always seems trapped in an expanded field of sculpture. In one sense, the aesthetics of three-dimensional objects are obviously sculpture, but in another, the engineering of technology and marketing seem opposed to a more “fine” art. And furthermore, something as influential to human society as an automobile seems almost too foundational, too much a part of the foundations of our experience, to qualify as sculpture.

Stout Scarab Sedan, 1936. Photo: Peter Harholdt. Courtesy of Ron Schneider.

 

But the Portland Art Museum’s The Shape of Speed exhibition forces a re-evaluation of that notion. While even a person captivated by the connections between sculpture and technology like myself might mistake the exhibition hall as a classic car show, the examples of streamlined engineering on display from the pre-World War Two decade show that the Futurists’ notice of the aesthetic power of technology is something we can still understand today, more than a century later.

In the work of Futurist artists and sculptures, one can feel the aesthetic of speed represented, but in the sculpted hulls of these streamlined vehicles, one can see the way that the engineering of speed developed its own characteristic aesthetic. Chrysler’s pioneering work using wind tunnels— now a standard practice for the industry— literally resculpted the shape of a motorized carriage into the thing that we now recognize as an automobile. The now classic teardrop shape found expression in everything from the Mercedes-Benz Streamliner, built to win a cross-continent race cancelled by the onset of war; to the Stout Scarab, a luxurious precursor to the minivan; to super efficient and yet unpopular Airomobile, a car that looks less like a car than an aircraft.

Mercedes-Benz 540K Streamliner, 1938. Photo courtesy Daimler AG. Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz Museum.

 

These designs are part of a history of the evolution of technology, when nothing so fast had ever been engineered, and so every new efficiency would automatically appear revolutionary. One of the most stunning examples is the Graham Combination Coupe, with a “leaning forward” grill that mimics an artifact of photographs of the time, in which speeding objects appear to be leaning forward, because camera shutters could not close fast enough to capture an image of the object in a single place. And perched on the front of that accelerating hood, is nothing less than a pair of pushed back chrome wings, heralding the “first flight of Angels” mentioned in Marinetti’s gushing text.

Graham Combination Coupe, 1939. Photo: Peter Harholdt. Courtesy of Charles Mallory.

 

For the public, these designs were often too radically different from what they were accustomed to, and many of these new streamlined forms never made it out of limited, concept-car prototypes. Today they still feel futuristic, but for a future that never actually came to pass. War took over the industrial capacity of many of these designers, and then, after a brief return to idealism during the Atomic Age, the environmental realities of oil production pushed automobile design towards a more less stunning form of efficiency. Today, cars are in many ways one more appliance— and thankfully so. But as our new technologies continue to hatch from one another in a spiraling evolution, it is worthwhile to see all the possibility that might emerge from the intersection of technology and sculpture.

By Adam Rothstein

                                                                            

In “Haikus & Doo-Dahs, Tiny to Titan,” Dewane Hughes’s exhibition of large-scale steel sculptures and maquettes on view at the Dallas Farmer’s Market, the Texas-based sculptor provides the viewer with a new perception of the market and its space.  Hughes’s use of steel, an industrial material, highlights the Market’s unique status as a space devoted to the fruits of agricultural labor that happens to be situated in the midst of one of the largest urban areas in Texas.  The Market itself functions as a kind of in-between space as it operates as a zone between industry and agriculture, metropolis and farmland. 

Doo-Dah 2.0

 

he particular character of the Market’s site is significant because, for Hughes, the experience of art occurs in the existential space that exists between the viewer and the sculpture.  This dynamic space spans both interior and exterior as seven maquettes and two floor pieces are installed in the Harvest Lofts lobby while five large-scale works are dispersed throughout the Market’s grounds.  As a result, Hughes presents viewers with multiple opportunities to have authentic, meaningful visual and somatic encounters with various works of differing sizes that are all united by the common element of steel.  Through their formal properties and their installation throughout a bustling outdoor marketplace and a stylish indoor space the sculptures provoke active, engaged responses rather than mere passive appreciation from the viewers.

Double Slit Skyline

 

Hughes is fascinated by language and the nature of communication and finds particular inspiration in the theories of Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky and the writings of the Beat Poets, including Allen Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferglinghetti, and Herbet Hunke.  Indeed, in a way, Hughes’s works function like visual poetry and he invokes this literary form in both the exhibition’s title and in the title of one of the outdoor works, Haiku 3.0.  This work which was, perhaps, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s innovative adaptations of the genre, visually reinterprets haiku’s focus on evocative images and the associations between them.  Like its literary counterpart, Haiku 3.0 suggests meaning to the viewer rather than overtly describing it.  The precise arrangement of the steel forms and the careful selection of the colors—pale blue and yellow in this case—is as significant to Hughes’s message as the viewer’s apperception that the subjective conditions of his or her respective reality result in a particular experience of the work.

Hornecker Haiku

 

The word “doo-dah” of the exhibition title and the outdoor work, Doo-Dah 2.0, attests to both the universality and the relativity of language as it simultaneously signifies everything and nothing, the specific and the unnamed.  Like the word that comprises part of its title, Doo-Dah 2.0 is open to interpretation.  In order to infer the work’s signification, the viewer is required to have a visually and physically meaningful encounter with the work, to have a substantive conversation with it.  For Hughes, neither the site, nor the work, nor the viewer is a self-sufficient, passive entity.  Instead, the existential space that exists between the art and the viewer is the ultimate subject of the exhibition and the viewer is invited to participate in the construction of that meaning through a visual investigation and somatic exploration of the works and how they affect the perception of their surroundings.  Indeed, the experiential journey of signification suggested by Hughes’s works exhorts viewers to construct an active form of artistic experience informed by the knowledge that human perception of the sculptures and the sculptures themselves are shaped by the ambient space just as the creative influence exerted by the artist and his works affect essential contributions to the lived, experiential space of the viewer and the viewer’s responsive involvement with the works.

By Kaia Magnusen

Installation view of SEED, at Paul Kasmin Gallery, June 21 – August 10, 2018. Wangechi Mutu in foreground. Photo: Christopher Stach

“Seed” at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York brings together 29 emerging to seasoned artists whose work embraces female archetypes — the goddess, warrior, mystic, sage, lover, maiden, and matriarch.  The layout allows works to “talk to each other” and the selection avoids or confronts stereotypes.  Curated by Yvonne Force, one theme is “the complexity and resonance of a long association between the natural world, sexuality and fertility, and spirituality and mysticism.”

Baseera Khan, Seat #6 & 4, 2018, prayer rugs, artist’s underwear, textiles, upholstery foam, wood support 45 x 28 x 3 1/2 inches, each, 114.3 x 71.1 x 8.9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS, New York

 

I was most provoked – in a positive way – by Seat # 6 & 4, 2018 — two curving wall tablets by Baseera Khan. Chevron, crescent, turret, and star shapes; prayer rugs, the artist’s underwear, and textiles are collaged onto two padded wood tablets (each 45 x 28 x 3 ½”) mounted together like the Ten Commandments. The artist’s striped and lace pink underwear becomes flat curving shapes and hues interacting with blue and green Islamic symbols and artifacts in a dialogue that invites an intimate discussion of women’s roles in Islam and Islamic women’s roles in the world.

Another mixed media work that took me by surprise was Ruby Sky Stiler’s Untitled, 2016. This mixed media head at first seems like a pattern-oriented pink female upper torso; up close, the intricate black and white mosaic background chevrons, stripes, and curves have depth from materials and processes I could not identify. The pink female is likewise an assembly of intriguing shapes, letters, and symbols.

Summer Wheat, Foragers, 2018, acrylic on aluminum mesh, 68 x 96 inches, 172.7 x 243.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery.

 

The new kinds of sculptural depth in Khan’s and Stiler’s works is also in works including Summer Wheat’s Foragers, 2018 (68 x 96”) in which acrylic paint is pushed through aluminum mesh to create uneven raised dotted surfaces. The main shapes — a central female with nearby child, owl, serpent, masked or veiled eyes, and boogeymen — are both abstract and figurative. The muted palette is mostly white, black, blue, and brown. The title and scene remind me of parables by Bruegel and Bosch. Morgan Blair’s 2018 tour de force shapes on shapes inter-mix textures and colors that seem to rise off the canvas; this  work’s super-long title begins 27 Undoctored Photos of Betsy DeVos’ Radioactive Gingerbread Learnin’ Supercenter…

Four sculptures near the gallery entrance set the show’s mood. Yoko Ono’s DOORS, 2011, is a single 100”-tall distressed white wood door with no walls around it. The plural title suggests doors opening. In one gallery, Rachel Feinstein’s Ballerina, 2018 dominates the room. This 85 ½”-tall winged nude is the artist’s version of The Winged Victory of Samothrace, the imposing Hellenist sculpture c. 190 A.D. towering above a key stairway at the Louvre. Instead of standing above viewers, Feinstein’s form dances with us; her “clothes” are colors; Ballerina symbolizes both women’s histories as art and their present victories in life and art.

Installation view of SEED, at Paul Kasmin Gallery, June 21 – August 10, 2018. Feinstein’s Ballerina in foreground.
Photo: Christopher Stach

 

Wangechi Mutu’s 2016 red soil and paper pulp bumpy globes Small Pox and Small Pox II are mounted on slim metal spikes on slender wood armatures. Like Ono’s Doors, the art addresses a concept that affects us all: deadly viruses we can’t see. Smallpox is supposed to be eradicated, but vials containing it still exist.

Vanessa German, sometimes i want to kill you #2, 2016, mixed-media assemblage, 76 x 24 x 16 inches, 193 x 61 x 40.6 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Pavel Zoubok Gallery, NY

 

Vanessa German’s fetish doll in the same gallery is titled sometimes I want to kill you #2, 2016. The black body is adorned with shells, buttons, teeth, cloth, yarn, keys, and signs. The black hands hold a knife and a watermelon slice. Atop the head is a metal bird taking off.

Three thread or fabric works were quite different from each other. Sarah Zapata’s Difference and Disorder I, 2018 (natural and synthetic fiber, hand-coiled rope, handwoven fabric) is a 31 ½”-tall basket with pockets, three filled with pillow forms and long ponytails. I was wowed by the website of this Brooklyn-based artist: http://sarah-zapata.com/. It’s a good idea to look up all the artists’ websites after you see this show (which features no Kasmin Gallery artists)!  Sophia Narrett’s Stuck, 2016 is an embroidery thread and fabric tapestry 62” long – a vignette of a women’s community with big houses in the background and women in nature engaged in various exchanges. Hein Koh’s Big Mother of Pearl, 2017 is a giant (60 x 36”) mauve and rhinestone-studded black velvet seashell opening to reveal its pearly eye.

Hein Koh, Big Mother of Pearl, 2017, acrylic, Aqua-Resin, fiberfill, fiberglass, glitter, Hydrocal, hinestones, spandex, string, styrofoam, velvet, 16-31 (adjustable) x 60 x 36 inches, 40.6-78.7 (adjustable) x 152.4 x 91.4 cm. Courtesy of Hein Koh.

 

The craft of these three works – and the whole show – is notable.  Diverse painting techniques included Cecily Brown’s loose, brushy curves in all directions facing Emily Marie Miller’s more invisibly-brushed oil –a ghostly Yin figure on a dark ground; nearby, Ambera Wellmann’s In Teeth, 2018, is an alluring intimate close-up with some Baconian distorted features. Lisa Yuskavage’s A No Man’s Land 2, 2013, a dark-toned monoprint with pastel hand additions, was special.

One drawback of a big theme show is the problem of stereotypes, even in creative depictions of “the hero,” “the slut,” and “wounded women.” This show encourages viewers to decide for themselves why and by whom women get called – or call themselves — witches, exhibitionists, or victims. Germaine Greer called herself a witch later in life; she fought some abusive labels yet left others in place, saying, “…There is no point growing old unless you can be a witch, and accumulate spiritual power in place of the political and economic power that has been denied you as a woman” (The Change). What we call ourselves and others is up to each of us. Add your comments below!

By Jan Garden Castro

Field Station: Claudia Peña Salinas,installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2018. Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography

There’s a purposeful tension between past and present in Claudia Peňa Salinas’s work.  Her installations evoke ancient Mexican history, but through the sparse language of minimalist grid-like sculptures reminiscent of Sol Lewitt.  Her site-specific works respond to the architecture of the gallery space, and her exhibition at the emphatically modern Broad Art Museum offers a re-creation of Tepantitla, a compound in ancient Mesoamerican city Teotihuacan.  Yet while evoking the ancient past, Salinas’s work also manages to speak to contemporary social issues.

Field Station: Claudia Peña Salinas,installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2018. Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Born in Montemorelos, Mexico, Salinas grew up surrounded by a predominantly flat landscape, and she describes the buildings in the area as “minimalist.”  These informed much of her subsequent work, which re-creates historic or mythological locations through reductive sculptural ensembles.  At the Broad, a modest network of brass cuboid sculptures stands in for Tepantitla.  Airy and almost fragile-looking, they leave much to the imagination, though a massive vinyl reproduction of one of Tepantitla’s famous ancient murals fills a gallery wall, lending the installation geographic specificity.  Here we see a host of reveling figures enjoying the lush abundance and fertility offered by the rivers gushing down the sacred mountain of the rain deity Tlaloc. A ceramic sculpture on the floor references an ambiguous form—possibly a temple–found on one of Tepantitla’s other murals. Looking almost like a pre-Columbian artifact, it also serves as a foil to its clearly modern sculptural surrounding.

Field Station: Claudia Peña Salinas,installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2018. Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Salinas incorporates natural elements and found objects into her work, such as  the sculpture Teotihuacan, with its large curtain of suspended fragments of wood, obsidian, metal, and other things all dangling from dyed cotton strings. Salinas collected these varied objects while taking walks just outside the periphery of Teotihuacan, where a fence divides the ancient city from the modern town of San Juan de Dios Teotihuacan. The objects not only reference the two cities, but also the tension between ancient and modern: obsidian was used extensively in pre-Columbian cultures and contrasts with the modern and industrial metal.

While referencing Mexico’s ancient past, this exhibit also speaks to current social issues.  A short film by Salinas addresses the controversies surrounding the $13 billion airport (designed by Pritzker-winning architect Norman Foster), currently under construction in Mexico City. It promises to be stunning when complete, but the sprawling structure has displaced many of the area’s inhabitants, giving rise to protests.

Field Station: Claudia Peña Salinas,installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2018. Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Claudia Peňa Salinas’s installations are admittedly illusive, requiring that viewers pay close attention to the materials used, and her cerebral works carry associations that aren’t always self-evident. But viewers willing to spend focused time with her work will find the experience rewarding. And while social commentary in her sculpture is understated, the current political discourse in America lends their allusions to veils, boundaries, and walls an uncanny, poignant relevance.

This exhibition runs through July 29.  More information on the artist, including images of her other multimedia works, can be found here.

By Jonathan Rinck

Memorial to a Marriage – Patricia Cronin and Deb Kass.
Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Portraits Gallery.

Sometimes you go to a museum to see one thing, and bump into another entirely unexpectedly.

A few months ago I went to see the recently unveiled Obama portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. It has become NPG’s practice that presidential portraits join their counterparts on the second floor, while the portrait of a first lady enters the hall of recent acquisitions. Just beyond the queue to see Amy Sherald’s painted portrait of Michelle Obama was another work of significance, lying in state: Memorial to a Marriage, by Patricia Cronin. The work depicts Cronin and her wife, artist Deborah Kass, nude on a bed, tastefully shrouded by a sheet. They rest in an embrace, Kass’s head nuzzled against Cronin’s neck, their toes touching.

It’s a feminist work, an LGBTQ work. And it was donated to the museum by Chuck Close, who in December became another famous person embroiled in #MeToo allegations.

First produced in marble in 2002—13 years before same-sex marriage was recognized nationwide—the sculpture was placed on a burial plot in Woodlawn Cemetery that Cronin shares with Kass. At the time, the couple’s relationship did not have legal status, which created many difficulties, as they discovered during an emergency hospital visit Cronin paid to her niece (on Kass’s side of the family). Since Cronin was not “legally related,” she was barred from entry. Similar issues existed with international travel, estate planning, and so on. Cronin created the sculpture out of protest, as a way to declare that, after death, yes, their relationship in life was a marriage.

A decade later the marble was showing signs of weathering. Cronin initially made a rubber mold of the marble, but it too was beginning to deteriorate. With perpetuity a concern, the marble was replaced by an 84-inch cast bronze. Additional 53-inch bronze editions—a scale that fit in Cronin’s studio freight elevator—were made.

The National Portrait Gallery acquired the work in 2017, after Curator of Painting and Sculpture Dorothy Moss paid a studio visit to Cronin. “I was… looking at some of her recent work and she mentioned that Chuck Close had acquired Memorial to a Marriage,” Moss said. Now, Close wanted to give it to a museum.

Memorial to a Marriage – Patricia Cronin and Deb Kass. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Portraits Gallery.

 

The sculpture isn’t the first representation of LGBTQ identity in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. “There is a portrait of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. A portrait of Sylvia Rivera. The list goes on,” Moss indicated. Cronin’s double portrait of her and Kass, however, is more overt than other depictions. It’s also a departure from the type of portraiture museum-goers so often see: seated figures overly aware that they were subjects of an artwork. Although funerary portraiture is a tradition that dates back millennia, it’s not a form that is top of mind for most people. “We are always looking to expand definitions of portraiture and to broaden our visitors’ conception of what a portrait can be,” Moss explained, speaking of both the formal nature of the Cronin sculpture, and its significance as a work of activism.

That activism has resurgent value. Despite campaign promises to the contrary, since President Trump’s inauguration he has been unfriendly to the LGBTQ community. To date, the Trump administration has dismantled protections for LGBTQ employees, attempted to remove transgender soldiers from active military duty, and made allowances for health workers to invoke religious objection to treating members of the LGBTQ community. Same-sex marriage may remain the law of the land for the near term, but as anti-LGBTQ judicial nominees get confirmed, its security may be threatened.

For all its value to the museum collection, however, the donation by Close remains an awkward footnote in the history of the work. In December 2017, one month after Memorial to a Marriage was first displayed at NPG, news surfaced that four women alleged Close had sexually harassed them. By January, four more women had come forward. The National Gallery of Art, located half a mile from the National Portrait Gallery, indefinitely postponed an exhibition of paintings by Close as a response to the allegations.

Allen Ginsberg (with Peter Orlovsky) by Raphael Soyer, oil on canvas, 1980. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mary Soyer © Raphael Soyer

 

“It was sad news to us,” Moss declared of the allegations against Close. She spoke of Close’s significance to the genre of portraiture, and noted that during conversations with Cronin about Close, Cronin would reinforce Close’s support of her as a female artist and as a lesbian artist. “So I am keeping those allegations separate from this particular portrait because I can only go by what Patricia Cronin has said about her direct relationship with Chuck Close.”

Cronin, who sold the work to Close in 2014, noted by email that they are good friends. “Actually he tried to buy it the year before, but I dropped the ball,” she said. She recalled an event where he said he was looking at Japanese bronzes. “I said that’s interesting and asked him why. He said, ‘because you won’t sell me yours!’”

Once purchased, the sculpture was installed in the garden at Close’s home on Long Island. “The minute we installed it… he told me he felt guilty that not enough people would see it there and that he wanted to donate it to a museum,” Cronin recalled.

When it came to describing how she felt learning that her friend had been accused of inappropriate behavior, Cronin took a broader view. “We are witnessing a seismic shift in our culture. Women now feel emboldened enough to say that sexually harassing language and behavior is no longer socially acceptable. Abraham Lincoln famously said, ‘You can’t escape history.’ And we are in such a moment.”

You can’t escape history, but evidently you can deflect the question.

It seems with most #metoo celebrities that are outed, stories of their generosity and charity also bubble up to the surface. The ability to help others, or to give charitably, doesn’t make the powerful immune to bad decisions, or criminal behavior; sometimes charity is a cover. While it’s clear that Cronin is grateful for the level of Close’s support, it’s unclear if she ever had knowledge, or was ever a target, of Close’s comments.

Memorial to a Marriage – Patricia Cronin and Deb Kass. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Portraits Gallery.

 

It’s also none of our business. Not until she says it is. Presumably, as has been the case with other high profile accusations—most notably in the entertainment industry—it takes time for friends to process.

And that relationship might take a while for others to process as well. Noticing that Close donated Memorial to a Marriage adds something to the work: something that was never intended to be there, but not unimportant. One could choose to ignore it, or take two photos and plop them on Twitter with an unhelpful, “Hmmm.” But it’s a situation that requires more than a careless Tweet. Undoubtedly, as years go by, more intersections—like those between Cronin and Close—will emerge. They will involve artists, curators, administrators, collectors, and critics; and they will provoke discussions about power and visibility.

“I think it’s fascinating that Memorial To A Marriage provoked interesting and, for some viewers, uncomfortable conversations about homosexuality, marriage equality and lesbian visibility,” Cronin wrote in one of her replies. “And 15 years later the same work can again encourage another important conversation.” How deeply that conversation unfolds as a #metoo story, of course, depends on whether or not the museum-goer notices the identity of the donor, and has knowledge of his alleged misdeeds.

However, despite the ironic twist, when most people end up seeing Memorial to a Marriage, it’ll probably only provoke the conversation over marriage equality. Only a few might discover there is a conversation to be had in the fine print on the wall alongside the artwork. Like so many issues, it’s right there in front of us, but we might not choose to face it.

By John Anderson

Installation view of Spencer Finch: The Western Mystery at the Olympic Sculpture Park. © Seattle Art Museum, Photo: Mark Woods.

When we think of representations of landscapes in art, the first thing that comes to mind might be the rich history of landscape painting. Developing in  the Egyptian, Roman, and Chinese traditions, landscape painting developed techniques of perspective, as well as idealistic concepts of nature— often focusing on the lack of humans, or at least minimal evidence of their existence in the works, in contrast to the “pure nature” of the landscape image.

In Spencer Finch’s installation at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, entitled The Western Mystery, we find a new form of landscape representation. With many colored panes of glass suspended from the ceiling of the PACCAR Pavilion, derived from images of sunsets of Seattle, Finch creates a landscape that is both representational and abstract, referencing Impressionistic landscapes of the 19th century. As the light from the pavilion windows shine through the glass, and as the viewer walks around the space, not only one but several skies are projected across the inside of the building.

Installation view of Spencer Finch: The Western Mystery at the Olympic Sculpture Park. © Seattle Art Museum, Photo: Mark Woods.

 

I have seen a number of contemporary landscapes in art trending towards the technological, as well as bringing landscape from the medium of painting into the three dimensional space of sculpture. For instance, at the John Yeon show at the Portland Art Museum, a large projection depicts time-shifted representations of a particular parcel of land near the Columbia River, both as a representation of the architect’s lasting legacy, and as example of his inspiration. The image moves, as the camera view pans across the landscape. Projected in the back of the gallery this screen brought the outside in, and used technology to bring us outside, as a contrast to the models of buildings on display.

Finch’s installation uses projection as well, but a much more passive, analog form. The panes of glass are like giant slides, and require the movement of the sun throughout the day to bring the motion of the sky inside the building. And yet, they also invoke the technological. Each separate color tone reads like a sampling of a digital photograph, and together they form a highly pixelated image, a digitally-remixed sky created as a hybridized, time-lapse portrait of the atmosphere.

Installation view of Spencer Finch: The Western Mystery at the Olympic Sculpture Park. © Seattle Art Museum, Photo: Natali Wiseman.

 

The installation also references some of those older ideals of sublimity. The suspended glass is as if shattered, and also threatening shattering. Bringing the outside into a modern, contemporary art space juxtaposes the ever present environment with our architectural attempts to keep that environment at bay. Without that ceiling and the white walls that support the installation, the actual sky would be visible. And yet in the tenuous balance, the light still shines in to activate and animate the installation. With flat planes of glass, the space is transformed in three or even four dimensions, as this landscape takes to the air.

By Adam Rothstein

In the Belly of the Beast: First Degree in Stephen Smith Fine Art exhibition space

Iron and steel were once the heart of industry in Birmingham. Central Alabama was the ideal site for producing steel as all three of the components needed (iron ore, limestone, and coal) could be found in abundance in the area.

Like its sister cities in the northern Rust Belt, Birmingham has seen a decline in steel production over the years. But it is also transitioning. From metalwork skills needed to make parts for other industries throughout the state to the arts and tourism, steel remains a vital part of the region.

Steelworkers would often call a furnace full of molten steel “the belly of the beast”. While the bellies of Birmingham’s furnaces may not always be full nowadays, smaller furnaces and ovens can be found in artists’ studios throughout the country. These little beasts are working overtime for artists to transform the steel culture and creatively forge the future.

Artwork by Lauren Koch

 

Sometimes futuristic, sometimes realistic, the ideas coming from the sculptors featured in Stephen Smith Fine Art’s In the Belly of the Beast provide examples of how this industry has evolved. The artists assembled by exhibition curator Stacey Holloway bring up themes that challenge, comfort, confront, and confound.

Holloway’s knowledge of sculpture and depth of her previous exhibitions inspired gallery director Paul Barrett to approach her about curating In the Belly of the Beast. Her installation successfully demonstrates the versatility of the medium as well as pieces that will amuse and delight viewers.

Artwork by Katie Hovencamp

 

One of the biggest challenges in bringing sculpture – and especially metal arts – to show in a gallery setting is space. The Smith Gallery is able to meet that challenge thanks to its original life as a movie theatre. With the open space and the high ceilings, the gallery has the ability to show more artists and display pieces of greater size and depth than some of their peer galleries.

Besides the collection of artists, what excites Barrett about this show is the approachability and versatility of the metal arts. Locally, there are classes available through an ongoing program at Sloss Metal Arts (SMA). Plus, metalworking skills are transferrable to the workforce. Information about creative and industrial training will be available during the run of the exhibition.

Artwork by Dominic Sansone

 

In fact, the 30-year-old SMA program will benefit from sales of the works on display in In the Belly of the Beast.  Keeping artists in Birmingham, supporting the creative community, and helping sustain successful programs like SMA are important, and Barrett is glad the gallery is able to support the community. One thing he stressed is that, no matter whether or not you intend to purchase art at an exhibition, showing up is vital to supporting and sustaining a creative community.

In the Belly of the Beast will be exhibited in two parts. First Degree opened Friday, May 4 with a reception celebrating the installation. As for the Second Degree, additional pieces will be on display beginning June 29, and will also feature an iron pour and demonstration class.

In the Belly of the Beast: First Degree

When: Opens May 4, 2018

Where: Stephen Smith Fine Art Gallery, 5104 Gary Ave., Fairfield, Alabama

Public Hours: Noon-4:00pm, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or by appointment

Contact: 205.417.1098 // stephensmithfineart@gmail.com

In the Belly of the Beast: Second Degree

When: Opens June 29, 2018 (with Iron Pour Demo)

Where: Stephen Smith Fine Art Gallery, 5104 Gary Ave., Fairfield, Alabama

Public Hours: Noon-4:00pm, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or by appointment

Contact: 205.417.1098 // stephensmithfineart@gmail.com

Featured Artists (Both Shows) – Leticia R. Bajuyo, Robin Baker, Adam Bodine, Michael Bonadio, Jason Sheridan Brown, Page Burch, Marshall Christie, Jacob Chrzan, Jeremy Colbert, Dylan Collins, Erin Cunningham, Nicole Davy, Kaylee DeWees, Sarah Dorau, Kurt Dyrhaug, Claire Lewis Evans, Feral Fagiola, Tobias Flores, McArthur Freeman II, Cassidy Frye, Katelyn Gabbard, Anastasia Green, Jack Gron, Liz Helfer, Ira Hill, Katie Hovencamp, John Stewart Jackson, Rachel Kidd, Lauren G. Koch, Coral Penelope Lambert, Teresa Lind, David Lobdell, Morgan Lugo, David Marquez, Andrew Marsh, Gerry Masse, Holly Reese McCreary, Kim McKenzie, Ted Metz, Garrett Millsap, Christyn Overstake, Sarah Caroline Padgett, Kenneth Payne, Allen Peterson, Wayne E. Potratz, Eric Powell, Cliff Prokop, Dominic Sansone, Ashley Seilhamer, Luke Sides, Ian Skinner, Kristen Tordella-Williams, Jen Torres, Steven Torres, Alex Townsend, Kevin Vanek, James Wade, Michael Wickerson, Ajene Williams, Ben Woodeson, Jason Tanner Young

First Degree Only – Danyelle Harlan, Joe McCreary, Forrest Millsap, Jacob Phillips, Logan Smith, Savannah Smith

Second Degree Only – Reid Arowood, Melody Hollenbeck, Garrett Millsap

By Rebecca Dobrinski

Xu Longsen: Light of Heaven. (2018) Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In Chinese mythology, the Kunlun Mountain is home to many gods and goddesses, it demarks the center of the four points of the compass, and it’s the place where Earth and Heaven meet.  For artist Xu Longsen, it served as the inspiration for an ambitious serious of site-specific paintings and sculptures that calculatedly respond to the architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago’s suite of Asian art galleries. 

Xu Longsen’s works are unmistakably contemporary but nevertheless draw from centuries of tradition. There are certainly strong visual and thematic parallels between Xu’s work and the thousand-year-old vertically-oriented scroll paintings of Fan Kuan, who portrayed nature as overwhelmingly vast and awe-inspiring.  Xu works are also a contemporary take on traditional shan-shui painting, a sub-category of Chinese landscape art which, rather than present a literal depiction of nature, aims instead to visually articulate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that landscapes evoke in our minds.  By its nature, shan-shui is an introspective art form.

Xu Longsen: Light of Heaven. (2018) Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

Many of these paintings are ambitiously large, and viewing them is an immersive experience.  Xu applies many washes of, variously, dark ink or paint, creating moody landscapes bathed in mist.  Up close, some of his works seem as abstract as a splatter painting by Jackson Pollock. But step back, and unintelligible shapes magically metamorphose into discernible hills, crests, and valleys.

His paintings are frequently sculptural.  For this exhibition, Xu created a series of ink paintings on stately columns of velvet (in photographs, they deceptively mimic marble or granite).  The largest of these is an imposing multistory painting which responds to the Institute’s Morton Staircase, which swoops around the work.  Washes of ink cascade down the velvet, conjuring images of a mountainous terrain.

Xu Longsen: Light of Heaven. (2018) Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

Xu’s works respond to the Institute’s space particularly well in the dimly-lit  Ando Gallery.  Here, his paintings surround the viewer on three walls and seem to literally radiate, acting as the light source for the space.   And the Ando Gallery, removed from the congestion and foot traffic of some of the museum’s other spaces, seems the perfect, serene setting for meditative works intended to take the viewer on an inward journey to a place of quiet introspection.

So should you find yourself at Chicago’s Art Institute between now and June 24, you’ll certainly want to take in such megastar paintings as Wood’s American Gothic or Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte, though these works are generally shrouded behind a several-layer deep wall of people, each jockeying for a reasonably decent spot to take a take a selfie worthy of an Instagram post.  But afterwards, work your way to the Ando Gallery, tucked deep within the Asian gallery suite, and collect your thoughts as you surround yourself with Xu Longsen’s mystical, other-worldly mountainscapes, and simply linger in the serene and meditative calm.

More information on the exhibition Heaven’s Light can be found here: http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/xu-longsen-light-heaven

By Jonathan Rinck

Kathy Ruttenberg, In Sync, 2018. 96” high x 52” diameter. Broadway Ave and 72ND St.
Image Courtesy of Fionn Reilly

From April 27TH through February 2019, after a tremendous amount of artistic labor and industry, a display of six large-scale sculptures will linger, like a daydream, along the pedestrian great green way of Manhattan’s Broadway—between 64TH and 157TH St. Kathy Ruttenberg on Broadway: in dreams awake is a commissioned project by the Broadway Mall Association; organized in coordination with NYC Parks, who for over 50 years has brought contemporary public artworks to the city’s parks, establishing New York City as one of the world’s largest open-air galleries.

Kathy Ruttenberg, All the World’s a Stage, 2018. 189.5” high x 52” diameter. Broadway Ave and 64TH St. Image Courtesy of Fionn Reilly

 

Kathy Ruttenberg is materializing the lifelong dream of many NYC artists, as she is on the verge of displaying and bringing to life her own anthropomorphic and wondrous art work at one of the most archaic thoroughfares on the island of Manhattan. The artist materializes a most necessary artistic female unconscious for her debuting outdoor installation; entitled in dreams awake after Henry D. Thoreau’s quote: “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” This title is physically and psychologically fitting, as her perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards the arts often sympathize with a dream-like-reality.

Empowering her feminine inspirations and natural explorations, these floral, animalistic mise-en-scéne sculptural mindscapes, full of vibrant folk echos and natural poetry, will conspicuously be palpable and fictionable, almost thought real, the moment they arise fourteen feet tall on Broadway. Before stepping into work or walking down the subway; perhaps traveling from school or your home; or wandering in front of your favorite park, these sculptures may rise up to meet you, offering some sort of optimism, as their fantastical and extraordinary character may lift the veil of reality to the everyday passerby; allowing the witnesses to childishly enter the sculptures without any political or social misconceptions, freeing themselves to the self contemplation of fantastical fables and figures coexisting in once reality. As Ruttenberg told me, during a visit at her studio, “They are pieces that children can go right into, but they have many layers.” Layers which the eyewitness might have to subjectively peel away and inspiringly explore throughout the year’s installation.

Kathy Ruttenberg, Topsy Turvy, 2018. 140.5” high x 52” diameter. Broadway Ave and 116TH St. Image Courtesy of Fionn Reilly

 

This fairy-tale vernacular, this somatic female driven narrative—which may “urge us to consider gender rhetoric and feminism in the context of corporeal consciousness and pure imagination”[1]—, is currently being assembled at its nest in Mt. Tremper, soon to be transported to a nearby resting entrepôt at the Bronx before ultimately being installed on Broadway avenue. For these installations, she explored new mediums, ludically fusing sculptural materials including glass mosaic, transparent cast resin, acrylic, patinated bronze, glazed clay, concrete and a meticulous configuration of LED lights that enlighten the sculptural dream—for the never sleeping Big Apple dreamers—after dusk.

Appraised by many art critics, curators and artists, Kathy Ruttenberg is an internationally renowned sculptor—born in Chicago, but raised in New York—who has built a prolific career spanning more than four decades. Ruttenberg began making art when she was very young, as her mother, Janet Ruttenberg, a Manhattan based artist, directed her desire and passion towards the exploration of the arts. Ruttenberg has had multiple solo exhibitions at Stux Gallery in New York and she has exhibited installations at the Biennale Internationale de Vallauris, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Roger Williams Botanical Center, the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche and many other eminent venues which have given her honorable mention and have invited her as a guest of honor exhibitor.

Kathy Ruttenberg, Fish Bowl, 2018. 101” high x 110” long x 96” wide. Broadway Ave and 157TH St. Image Courtesy of Fionn Reilly

 

In 1992—after receiving her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and pursuing advanced studies in Morocco and at the graduate program of the New York University in Venice—Kathy Ruttenberg’s natural panorama shifted when she migrated toward the Catskill mountains to a more colorful country. She moved to the forested and ever free-spirited bucolic landscape of Upstate New York to bloom and to find a complete sense of her own rebirth. There, her conception of self metamorphosed as the land, flora and fauna wished to do. While settling in, Ruttenberg realized she had only begun a long-lasting relationship with the surrounding environment and its creatures, as well as with clay: the medium of her acclaimed fantastical, anthropomorphic sculptures.

Clay, an earthbound material, is a malleable and fastidiously sensitive medium that allows artists to clearly express the emotional indentations that their bare hands impress onto the the clay’s texture and color. As Anindita Dutta, Indian-born visual and clay based artist, stated in an interview with Zofeen Maqsood, Hindustan Times journalist, “Just like in life, no two scars created on clay are alike.” Ruttenberg’s environmental and feminine concerns mold into the soft material that is clay. Every emotional scar is impressed, embedded deeply in clay and the artist’s sculptural ideas; her symbolic narrative is immobilized in the firing of the clay, only to be immortalized, ultimately, in its glazing. The sculptures are allegorically charged mythological and natural figures that move and coexist inside Ruttenberg’s own constructed fantastical and personal narrative. By engaging in a conversation with these anthropomorphic characters and concepts—as in her watercolor drawings, crucial prolepsis to her sculptures—she exposes the urgent demands of her own and other’s persona, as well as the freedoms that an imaginary world can invoke onto society.

Kathy Ruttenberg, In Sync, 2018. 96” high x 52” diameter. Broadway Ave and 72ND St. Image Courtesy of Fionn Reilly

 

Soon enough, Ruttenberg will raise her jaw-dropping fairy-tale figures and self-portraits on the public landscapes of Broadway, figure’s some critics describe as a “new kind of story-telling impresario.” Picasso’s biographer, John Richardson, also an acquaintance of Kathy Ruttenberg, considers her artwork as a matter of contemplation and deserved eminence, as not many artist’s base their artwork on an old traditional medium like clay, prolifically creating symbologically condensed and aesthetically marvelous ouvré with an authentic chimeric aspect and joyful atmosphere.

Ruttenberg educates through her work the everyday spectator on the current environmental emergency, as well as on the lack of female somatic empowerment in society. Her sculptures stand for that intention: to precipitate an aesthetically optimistic spirit onto its witnesses and to engender an immensely positive appreciation for the female unconscious and the fantasy of the natural world. Almost an outwardly overt contrast with the urban city stretch and man’s removed relationship to nature. As she said in an interview, “I find myself using anthropomorphic fables to return nature’s creatures to our human consciousness.”, or in this case, across many streets of the main Broadway of New York City.

Kathy Ruttenberg, Ms. Mighty Mouse, 2018 . 120” high x 48” wide x 32” diameter. Broadway Ave and 79TH St. Image Courtesy of Fionn Reilly

 

Ruttenberg lives with more than 50 farm animals at her farmstead/house/art studio. Her empathy and generosity doesn’t halt with animals, but extends to environmental conservation. She has donated her designs, products and artworks to benefit Green Chimneys (a Brewster-based nonprofit that uses animals to help special-needs children), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, the Lemur Conservation Foundation and the Woodstock Land Conservancy.

Michele Lorusso is a writer and photographer based in New York City.

References:
[1] WSI Administration, “Kathy Ruttenberg, Nature of the Beast”, 2014. Wall Street International Magazine.

Installation View, Bespoke.

Additive manufacturing technologies, often called 3D printing, don’t necessarily change sculpting as much as they do our understanding of the sculpting process. As bespoke processes of creation involved into what we now know as industrial manufacturing, a pivotal feature of the newly produced objects were that they were more closely identical, that is, mass produced in replication of an ideal object. Previously, objects like cookware, machinery, and even dwellings were certainly mass produced, but each individual object had variations and inconsistencies that showed the fingerprints of the individual builders.

3D Print Custom Prosthetic Courtesy of 3D Systems

 

As more of our objects transition from physical to digital, there is a sense in which we think of this regularity as increasing. Every copy of a sound file or an ebook is supposed to be exactly the same, even more so that the manufacturing imperfections of a compact disc or the pages of a bound book might be. However, the digital aspects of additive manufacturing enable a new sort of bespoke customization. Using durable materials once limited to large, expensive production runs in a factory, now the produced objects can be slightly different, modified for the deisgner or the user, using algorithmic alterations based on a nearly endless series of variables. Perhaps it is not the objects that customized, so much as the production process— such that the minimal tolerances between design and finished product are now accessible across a wide range of productions, not just those that economically justify the outfitting of a large factory.

Aidan Robinson, Lego Arm. Courtey of Autodesk

 

In actual terms, the result of this sort of newly custom production are on display at the Design Museum Foundation’s exhibition Bespoke Bodies: The Design and Craft of Prosthetics. Prosthetics are nothing new, of course, being produced to aid human beings missing body parts for thousands of years. However, changes in technology, like 3D printing, are enabling new advances in this time-honored craft.

Most of these advances happen on the functional level, and rightly so. Cheaply produced, durable mechanisms allow more functionality in prosthetic limbs at decreased cost. The precise customization available with these technologies unables better fits to the wearer’s body, which also increases functionality as well as comfort.

Third Thumb. Courtesy of Dani Clode

 

But additionally, the prosthetic (from the Greek: “adding things”) is related to the aesthetic (from the Greek: “perceptible things”). As naturally as humans adapt their tools to work in concert with their bodies, we still look at prosthetics as different, unexpected, unusual from the body parts we expect to be there. But in this domain, additive technology is really breaking new ground. The customization is allowing new materials, as well as the wearer’s own artistry, to alter the prosthetic from simply a replacement, to sculptural augmentation. The pop artist Viktoria Modesta’s riveting performance Prototype starring (not in spite of) her custom built prosthetics; Aidan Robinson’s Lego Arm, and Dani Clode’s Third Thumb all showcase the ways in which humans visualize changing not only their shape, but their look, given the ability to easily do so.

Perhaps our bodies themselves are our original sculptural medium. As fragile as we can be, we also can remake ourselves to be far more than we were, given the inspiration and the tools to shape ourselves.

By Adam Rothstein

Raphael Pangilinan, Obscurité, 2018. 13ft x 8ft x 9ft high. MANA Contemporary BSMT Vault. Image Courtesy of the Artist

The grounds of an industrial two-million square-foot building in Jersey City are home to one of the most influential art centers in the state of New Jersey. Since its foundation in 2011, MANA Contemporary has progressed to become a collaborative environment that supports the emergent generation of artists by means of facilitating private studios, a myriad of workspaces, art programs and residencies. Through its ongoing supportive aid, they aim to foster local and international sourced innovations, collaborations, entrepreneurships and exhibitions.

Inside MANA’s basement there is a twenty-four by eighteen feet vault where, Raphael Pangilinan, a Filipino-born French artist, exhibits an isolated, original piece from his “distorted” series collection entitled Osbcurité. A variety of merged wooden, uneven rhomboid are shaped into one connected sculpture which emits through LED’s a reflective single light environment, set within the centerfold of the structure’s unifying segments. As the vault has no illumination, the absence of it enhances the proportions and shining of the geometrical sculpture, which draws out a visual allure for the viewer, who’s outside the vault. From outside, they read and intake the sentimental and social context Pangilinan delivers on the installation’s statement, shown prior to entering the vault. Once you enter, the sculpture’s rudimentary anatomy and modern design, juxtaposed with the squared and enclosed dimensions of the vault, calls for meditative mesmerization which entrances and makes one ponder, or even visualize a unified, loving family clan.

Raphael Pangilinan, Obscurité, 2018. 13ft x 8ft x 9ft high. MANA Contemporary BSMT Vault. Image Courtesy of the Artist

 

“Distorted Lighting Sculpture” is the idea and design of Raphael Pangilinan, architect who graduated from the Philippines and became a product developer manager in France. When speaking about Obscurité, he states in his installation’s statement, “This exhibit represents the 1.3 billion people in the world who have little or no access to electricity, including all the victims of natural calamities who continue to live without power.” Pangilinan employs the area inside the vault to conjure a certain confined abandonment where the dark, empty interior becomes a representation of the inequalities of resources and power the world’s societies dwell in. Obscurité represents the state of being unknown or abandoned, as its meaning could refer to. The darkness inside the basement vault complements the sculpture, both aesthetically and conceptually. The sculpture, although, counteracts the aphotic space, as the artist engages the illumination of the sculpture to enhance its enlightened physical attachment which reveals its embedded optimistic properties that, in case of danger or sudden oppression, whomever is unified and strong will emotionally and socially thrive.

Raphael Pangilinan, Obscurité, 2018. 13ft x 8ft x 9ft high. MANA Contemporary BSMT Vault.
Image Courtesy of the Artist

Pangilinan writes in his installation statement, “Distorted Lighting Sculpture embodies relationships amongst members of a single-family unit. How each individual’s distinct trait makes every human being unique and capable of uplifting and enlightening those in need. Creating an interlocking bond and powerful connection to triumph over life’s challenges.” Through this idea, Pangilinan incorporates the use of local, indigenous materials and other natural resources to design and build unifying geometrical shapes which symbolize an interconnected family clan that overcomes social darkness through its familiar, intimate and physical conglomeration.

Obscurité depicts the meticulously manifestation of a creative eye for detail, an artistic mind-set and a refined avant-garde level of craftsmanship skills combined with a background in architecture plus furniture design. Obscurité represents an ingenious expressive force that integrates light-sculpture concepts into exceptional handmade, one-of-a-kind, pieces of art; and through this one piece installation Raphael Pangilinan explores and addresses an ongoing answer to an open problem: the poor never have sufficient resources, as they are limited by social or political power structures which undermine there bare necessities, like electricity, clean water, food, a rooftop. This leaves the unknown, the unheard and the unseen powerless, unable to gain any social status that could benefit or better their quality of living. Obscurité, paradoxically, shines its light on this issue and exposes it by creating an interlocking sculpture that manifests the powerful and uplifting interconnection families create in order to triumph over any quandary or life’s challenges.

Obscurité is currently on view at the MANA Contemporary BSMT Vault

By Michele Lorusso

Tandy Dennos 3. Reflection II

As a child, Craig Tandy was keenly observant of instances where light seemed to become tangible, as when the thick cigarette smoke in movie theaters made palpable the ethereal shafts of light streaming from the projector, or when a focused beam of sunlight managed to break through a hole in a cloud.  Since then, Tandy has produced an impressively vast and varied body of Constructivist-inspired sculpture, and much of his work takes its direct inspiration from the physics and properties of light.  His Projection sculptures currently on view in the spacious atrium of the Dennos Museum in Traverse City, Michigan, are a stately series of nylon monofilament sculptures which evoke reflected light through Tandy’s calculated application of geometry and physics. 

Tandy Dennos 7 Triple Beam (detail)

 

For his Projections, Tandy radiates strands of nylon monofilament thread outward from a source, creating a form reminiscent of a light-cone.  Once Tandy decides the angle at which these cones will strike a surface, simple geometry determines the shapes and forms they’ll then assume.  The effect evokes focused lights shining on surfaces at oblique angles, variously illuminating circular or elliptical patches of wall.  The illusion is enhanced by the strategic placement of some of his sculptures high among the track-lighting in the museum’s atrium.  Other works hang from the wall, framed in deep shadowboxes, and the nylon monofilament within seems to ricochet around their interiors.

Tandy – Dennos 10 – Focal Lenghts

My initial response to the cerebral nature of his Projections was to associate them with the mathematically-inspired wire sculptures of Gabo, and Tandy assured me that while his work incorporates a wide variety of influences (Tatlin, Lissisky, Calder, and his early mentor Michael Haydon, for example), Constructivism is indeed the movement with which he most identifies.   His works, Tandy writes, apply “physics, mathematics, and engineering as blueprints to realize creative forms,” and, like the Constructivists, he derives inspiration from nature, architecture, and science.

There’s a satisfying visual logic in Tandy’s sculpture.  His works rhyme nicely with the early 20th Century Constructivist experiments of Gabo and Tatlin, but in their ever-constant adherence to the physics of light, they also speak to the beauty and elegance of the laws of science and the laws of nature: subjects which transcend any particular movement and remain both timeless and universal.

Lines of Light is on view at the Dennos Museum Center through April 29.  More information on Tandy’s art can be found here.

By Jonathan Rinck 

Portia Munson’s “FLOOD” images courtesy of Disjecta.

A wave of objects inhabited the gallery in Portia Munson’s Flood, at the Disjecta Contemporary Arts Center. Mostly plastic, some metal, others paper, and yet still others, constructed from material that is harder to parse. But all of them, blue. They were blue things. In their unevenness, their jumbled edges, stacked and piled together, in their mass and totality, they were blue.

There are many ways that we organize our things. At different times, the various forms of gravity in our societies capture the objects in our orbits in different ways. We sort our things based on value, or we arrange them based on their use to us. And then we complicate those systems with other sub-categories: is a value of exchange, or a value of personal affinity and emotion? Is is a use based on having it accessible, like a tool; or is a use of having it present, like a piece of furniture?

Portia Munson’s “FLOOD” images courtesy of Disjecta.

 

It is easy to pick up an object in my house and say what that particular object means to me. But what about picking up two objects? Do I have to speak of them in relation to each other? Or do I only consider them individually? At what point do the gravity of objects create a “third body problem,” in which we stop being the center around which they rotate, and they begin to relate to each other as much or more?

It’s easy to look at the objects that were in Flood and say that they are garbage. Refuse— the objects that lost their usefulness to someone, and so they became available as found materials for art. Overwhelmingly, they are plastic, which is our age’s idiom of disposability, regardless of how degradable they might be. Packaging is the new avatar of limited utility. Once packaging was finely crafted, from wood and glass. But now it represents a shell, meant to be cracked and discarded once the contents are consumed. But that is not all that made up the Flood. Kitchen wares, toys, fashion items, tools, decorations, things meant to be art themselves… things that were the packaging for much more indistinct items, like ourselves.

Portia Munson’s “FLOOD” images courtesy of Disjecta.

 

The contents of the Flood were themselves indistinct, blurring into each other. The bright blue that was once meant to make them distinguishable and appealing on a store shelf now serves to make them a morass. Not a unified cloud, but certainly no longer individual. Like flotsam and jetsam, washed into fluid motion in their static myriads, they become a new thing, that must be dealt with as a whole, neverending, always extending further along the shoreline between us and the tossing oceans of our objectified lives.

How many of the objects that were in Flood might have been mine at some point, before I casually disgarded them? How many of the objects were literally mine? I cannot say. There is no way I could identify a particular sponge, an individual bottle of washing liquid, a blue… I don’t even know what that blue-item is. It sits there, among the other items in the horde, and I couldn’t say if I’ve seen it before, or even used something similar. It has passed beyond object, to become only blue.

By Adam Rothstein

Shane Darwent, Suburban Psalm, 2018 Photograph: Samuel Morgan Photography for SPRING/BREAK Art Show

The 2018 SPRING/BREAK Art Show celebrated its seventh anniversary on two abandoned floors of a corporate high-rise in Times Square. Catalogued as one of the most experimental art fairs in New York, the S/BAS aims to exhibit artwork, with a low-cost entry, through underutilized New York City spaces that are uncommon to the traditional cultural landscape the art market has set as a rigid example. Both founders, Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly—with a creative superstaff that has organized, curated, facilitated and produced events inside the “Big Apple”—provide an internationally recognized art platform that delivers established and emergent artwork from around the world, customarily but not exclusively during the Armory Show, Volta NY, Independent and NADA.

Splitface, 2017. Photography Archival pigment print mounted to museum board on custom plywood panel 30 x 56 inches Unique. Curated by Trevor King + Clara McClenon

 

Shane Darwent, born in Texas and an MFA graduate from Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, is the ISC’s 2017 Student Award winner and a recent Tulsa Artist Fellowship resident. Darwent is one of the hundreds of artists who is showcasing and selling their artwork at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show. Inside of space 2371, an office room in a corner of the twenty third floor, Darwent’s installation entitled Suburban Psalm, a landscape that could be defined as a “rockscape”, inhabits the space comfortably facing the eminent city views. Darwent states, “I grew up in the suburban fringe of a mid-sized American city, the son of a construction worker […] Today, my work picks up where my father’s left off.” Both Clara McClenon and Trevor King, who was ISC’s 2015 Student Award winner, curated Shane Darwent’s installation, which reconfigures and recycles the facades, objects, materials and experiences inside suburbia, implicating their liminal nature between the connecting zones of the metropolis and its neighbouring outskirts. The vinyl siding on remodeled buildings, the concrete rock walls grounding both extremities of the bridges, the galvanized garden edges of the parks, the painted brick walls, the metal fences, a pot: all of them are pertinent urban materials that honor the aesthetics and renewal of the suburbs, as well as his father’s work.

Athabasca, 2018. Sculpture Free standing sculpture: rock wall polymer veneer, plywood, aluminium, stucco, paint.
Floorwork: plywood, MDF, paint, pea gravel 96 x 48 x 85 inches Unique. Curated by Trevor King and Clara McClenon

 

Suburban Psalm exposes a citified backyard lawn of contemporary contemplation where the sculptures—“able to be placed in a variety of arrangements in response to venue”—simulate a “suburban built vernacular” with its meandering walking pathways around the sculptures. Only two sculptures, Athabasca and Monolith/Mirage (Times Square) were specifically made for this fair’s project. The rest of the sculptures in the installation were gathered from other past exhibitions, such as the 2017 Windsor-Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art (Ontario, Canada), Wasserman Projects (Detroit, MI, 2017) and the Stamps Gallery, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, 2017).

Monolith/Mirage (Times Square), 2018. Sculpture. Vinyl siding, paint, plywood, spray foam insulation 144 x 96 x 30 inches Unique Curated by Trevor King and Clara McClenon Image Courtesy of the Artist

 

As the prompt for the fair’s curational theme reads: “A Stranger Comes to Town”, Shane Darwent constructed his idea of bringing a stranger, literally, into town. He forges a landscape in his installation where those gentrified frontiers and spaces become intertwined with what is the epicenter of an urban and corporate modern environment. Shane Darwent’s Suburban Psalm efficiently overlaps these imaginative sculptures with the geometrical similarities in the adjacent cityscapes. Although he does not try to echo the chaotic ambience the city emits, as one of his main intentions for this imaginative space is to evoke pause inside of the installation, to engender some type of serenity and tranquility in this suburban garden, counteracting the revolving SPRING/BREAK Art fair experience. Suburban Psalm also focuses its approach on the formal traditions of a garden: as a place that’s inviting, pleasurable, meditative, positive; even though the materials in the sculptures mimic a public urban environment which might often seem alien to those factors. In a way, Suburban Psalm establishes a dichotomy and a juxtaposition in the every-day relationships we, as spectators, hold of certain materials, images or settings.

Floorwork (Gentle Curve with Milk Crates), 2017. Sculpture Galvanized landscape edging, plywood, pea gravel and found milk crates 60 x 20 x 4 inches Unique Curated by Trevor King + Clara McClenon Image Courtesy of the Artist

 

The suburbs are places where people move with an aspirational purpose, sometimes due to the lack of space in the cities, sometimes for economical purposes, others just to be away from the chaotic metropolis in order to find a more familiar, open or bucolic setting. But the suburbs can also be alienating themselves, as people, nowadays, are spread out by big parking lots, many central spaces, gas stations, shopping centers and traffic thoroughfares. In a way, the suburbs make people strangers despite their XIX utopian design. With this in mind, Shane Darwent invites the viewer to retrieve from his installation the unfamiliarity and hyper-familiarity the materials emancipate, as if to say, “I know this form, I’ve experienced this form… but I’ve never experienced it in this way”. The artist states during Clara’s interview, “I think I’ve always been interested in what happens when you liberate those materials from those very efficient processes and you create works with them that are purely speculative. It’s been this interesting dialogue with the building trades in general.”

Maze Daze, 2017 Photography Archival pigment print mounted to Dibond, wood, paint, mirror 34 x 36 x 4 inches Unique Curated by Trevor King + Clara McClenon Image Courtesy of the Artist

 

This dialogue is born when Shane Darwent thoroughly investigates the relationships between the potential in the material, its history and, later on, finds out how it responds by examining the way we, as psychological entities, hold onto spaces, objects, images and people to feel connected to a time and place, as well as to a sense of self. These relationships shape our sense of reality. With Suburban Psalm, he built his own reality, his own backyard garden inside an office, on the 23nd floor of a Times Square skyscraper.

By Michele Lorusso

Danh Vo: Army Boys, Quy Nhon, 1966, black-and-white Photograph: Joseph Carrier, from the installation “Good Life”, 2007. Courtesy Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin.

A homage to Danish artist Danh Vo (b. 1975, Bà Rịa, Vietnam) and a rendering of Take My Breath Away (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 9—May 9, 2018)

Installation view: Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 9—May 9, 2018. Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2017

 

As enticing as it is to walk the sloping, spiraling ramps of the Guggenheim’s iconic rotunda and commence a contemplative eye-rumination of Vietnamese-born Danish artist Danh Vo’s exhibition entitled Take My Breath Away—a most complete survey of the full spectrum and appraise of his fifteen years of oeuvre—, I dwell across the main floor and delay my inaugural art exhibition in the “Big Apple” with an eight dollar glass of Italian wine. The museum’s tall ceiling and white walls become louder as the people enter—what Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, calls—the “uncovered oculus”. Some members and invitees are already ascending the circular corridor and have begun interacting with the choreography of the installation—curated and organized by Katherine Brinson, with the help of the artist, Susan Thompson and many others. But I stand still, in the corner, near the drinking booth, seemingly composed, trying not to divulge an over excitation of the scene I’ve arrived upon—I think it’s valid to reiterate here the fact that this is my first art exhibition in New York, as well as the first art exhibition I’ll be writing about.

Everyone at the museum is dressed to the nines, which enhances the curiosity in the air to discern, behold, rationalize, philosophize, contemplate, assume, deduce, identify what Trung Ky-Danh Vo Rosasco Rasmussen’s art is all about. I’d say my attire is more like semi-elegant, as I’m wearing my dirty, all black high-top converse; so, in my fortunate case, it’s the red wine that enhances my curiosity. I sip the last drop in front of the corridor’s security guard, nod towards him with gratitude, throw the plastic cup in the nearest trash can and begin walking up the rotunda.

As I ascend, I notice a general, shared particularity in the public: they all seem perplexed as the objects presented in this uniquely accommodating venue rarely connect with each other. Notwithstanding their inexperience of his oeuvre, seldom the public does grasp the meaning the artist intends to channel by interpreting the intrinsic manner and natural character of the symbology in the object being presented: letters Henry A. Kissinger wrote addressing his appetite for the arts at a time of war; a cardboard box redesigned into a golden American thirteen star colony flag. What they do not notice are the objects’ personal partnerships and entwined narratives with the artist. Danh Vo speaks to this in an interview about the exhibition Hip Hip Hurra at the Statens Museum for Kunst National Gallery of Denmark. He states, “I think that one of the most beautiful things about an exhibition is going off track, getting lost for a bit and asking a lot of questions. If that happens, I think it’s been a successful exhibition.” Danh Vo is not the type of artist who’s impressively incisive in his deliverance of context and stories surrounding the objects. On the contrary, he merely bridges the gaps between the presented objects and his subjective intervention; showcasing the intersection of broader, diverse historical themes in seemingly mundane, banal objects that hold personal experiences.

Installation view: Danh Vo: Take My Breath Away Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February 9—May 9, 2018. Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2017

 

Along the way, having almost spiraled two floors, I encounter one of the security guards whose job is to prevent the public from touching the pieces. This specific piece is the historically famous chandelier which suspended gloriously from the former ballroom at the Hôtel Majestic, Paris, where the 1973 Peace Accords to end the Vietnam war were signed. I introduce myself to the security guard, whose name is Miah. I ask him if he knows of the chandelier’s story. He says he doesn’t. At that exact moment, I realized that many, if not all, attendees at the exhibition did not possess the political, historical and intimate informed factors that unravel the cultural critiques, social pressures and burdened desires the artist had, consciously, bestowed upon the artwork.

As I share the story of the chandelier with Miah, elaborating upon the fluctuation of meaning the artist conveys in specific installations, I observe my surroundings and notice that many attendees are behind me listening closely at the story I’m telling to the overjoyed wonderment of the security guard. Miah kindly expresses his thanks after I’ve concluded the telling. We trade phone numbers, and he even asks me to take a photo of him next to the chandelier. Later on, while I continue up the circuitous corridors, I text him the photo and ponder on what has just occured. We both hold a moment in time, a photography of him next to a sculpture which, in parallel, correspondingly holds a moment in time. We formed, through this circumstance, a simple, intimate collaboration, which contributed more combinations of stories to the chandelier. This situation borders on the juxtaposed parallel with Danh Vo’s proclivity to acts of collaboration. Katherine Brinson writes—in her most recently published book, commissioned by the Guggenheim and with the same title as the ongoing exhibition—, “Almost all of his art is a combination of his and other people’s work. The gold leafing was done by craftsman in Thailand; the mammoth bones acquired from a fishing family in the Netherlands; he has worked with performants and musicians […]”.

Photography: courtesy of Xavier Hufkens Danh Vo The End, 2014. Ink drawing and gold leaf on cardboard Budweiser box. 40 x 40 x 27 cm | 15 11/16 x 15 11/16 x 10 5/8 inches

 

Danh Vo’s work does imply a collaboration, as he has done multiple times with his father, Phung Vo, through the exercise of his elegant penmanship. Phung Vo’s skilled calligraphy amazingly mimetized the last letter that Théophane Vénard, a French missionary martyr working for the imposition of Christianity in a Vietnam not yet under French colonial domination, wrote to his father before being executed. He has also collaborated with other artists and photographers who have gifted him the usage of their art in order to address certain personal and historical narratives. Although, purposely knowing the plundering motifs his work is fixated on, it’d be more accurate to say that Danh Vo specifically employs into 2.2. 1861 the appropriative method his father’s collaboration has embedded in itself—Phung Vo’s exact, visual transcription of Vénard’s letter without knowing how to read or write the French language—, as it was, and is, parallely analogous with the blindly methods of a missionary in a foreign country.

Danh Vo, 2.2.1861, 2009. Ink on paper, writing by Phung Vo, 29.6 x 21 cm, open edition. Photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. © Danh Vo

 

I will also allude to the fact that most of Danh Vo’s artwork is a product of chance. Similar to what occurred with Miah, as it was essentially pure  chance that he was entrusted with the attendance to this opening exhibition, that he was working that February 9 th evening and, luckily, that he was  given the task to guard the chandelier for the night, where I met him. Danh Vo, while living in Pacific Palisades (California) at the Villa Aurora artist  residency, met Joseph M. Carrier, an American military analyst in the Vietnam war. Carrier made an impression on Danh Vo by pronouncing his  came with the correct Vietnamese phonetics, a rather rare occurrence, as the letter D sounds like a Y. After further questioning, Carrier told him all  bout his travels and knowledge of the Vietnamese culture. Danh Vo, who had lost all physical and mental contact with the country he had left  behind, yearned to learn about his own heritage and lost culture through the anecdotes Carrier had experienced in his 11 years in Vietnam. They
eventually ended up traveling to Vietnam together. One day, while strolling through the streets in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, Carrier made a particular commentary which Danh Vo, in a way, had been looking for all his life. He commented on the casual custom the Vietnamese men had of walking hand in hand. This surprised Danh Vo to the point that he felt the necessity to document it with his camera. Subsequently, after arriving back in California, Carrier gifted Danh Vo many black and white film negatives, letters, diaries, war reports, tickets, passports and other objects from the period of his sojourns in Vietnam.

Danh Vo: Army Boys, Quy Nhon, 1966, black-and-white. Photograph: Joseph Carrier, from the installation “Good Life”, 2007. Courtesy Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin.

 

This archive became the source of one of Vo’s most personal installations as it addresses homosexuality inside Vietnam through Carrier’s erotic gaze; a foreign and even hidden platonic reality which Danh Vo desired to unravel and reconstruct for a long period of time. It was only chance, only pure luck, that gifted him the opportunity to meet Joseph M. Carrier at an exhibition the resident artists at Villa Aurora had put together. Susan Thompson writes, “He has spoken of them [the 12 black and white photographs presented at the exhibition, which carry the title Good Life ] as a mediated self-portrait wherein he identifies with both the photographer and the subjects.” Good Life is one of many of Danh Vo’s works of art in which the practice of reenacting historical or existing material is perceived, reevaluated and questioned. I believe this is Danh Vo’s signature practice, as this form of reenactment involves a personal and dependent interaction with matter and manner, beyond the exact or authoritative account of the story. In a sense, this is precisely what Danh Vo embarks upon in every piece of work. He imparts to the viewers and spectators a rendition of his surrogated autobiography, as he appoints objects, moments and memories to the layering of his fluid self.

Danh vo says, “I don’t really believe in my own story, not as a singular thing anyway. It weaves in and out of other people’s private stories of local history and geo-political history. I see myself as a container that has inherited […] these infinite traces of history without inheriting any direction. I try to compensate for this, I’m trying to make sense of it and give it a direction myself.” For the artist, the possession of these “infinite traces of history” serves to fill the lacunas of his identity. He addresses his “flux of self” through the substitution of his own history with the appropriation of the history of others’. It is only through this creative, therapeutic process of surrogation that his autobiography builds its own timeline and emancipates his-story.

By Michele Lorusso

Installation view, Michael Rakowitz: Backstroke of the West, MCA Chicago September 16, 2017—March 4, 2018 The invisible enemy should not exist, (2007–ongoing) Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

In 1995, Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein, established the Fedayeen Saddam, a notorious paramilitary force.  As a devoted fan of the Star Wars trilogy, Uday issued an exact replica of Darth Vader’s helmet as part of the Fedayeen’s official uniform—a bizarre and unsettling instance of life mimicking art.  At Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a Fedayeen helmet sits alongside a Darth Vader helmet as part of Chicago-based conceptual artist Michael Rakowitz’s mid-career retrospective, a show which calls attention to politically charged and revealing instances of cross-cultural exchanges between East and West.    

Michael Rakowitz, May the Arrogant Not Prevail, 2010. Found Arabic packaging and newspapers, glue, cardboard, and wood; 35 ¼ x 194 ¼ x 37 ½ in. (597.5 x 493.4 x 95.3 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Marshall Field’s by exchange, 2015.4 Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery

 

Rakowitz’s socially conscious projects and performances are many and varied, and often assume a second life outside the confines of the gallery space.  They include a food-cart run by American veterans which serves traditional Iraqi meals on paper-plate replicas of Saddam’s personal china, and functioning heated shelters for the homeless that can be assembled from five dollars’ worth of materials.  At the MCA, Rakowitz’s retrospective Backstroke of the West (the title taken from a Chinese mistranslation of a bootleg DVD of The Revenge of the Sith) features twelve major projects spanning 20 years of work.  It’s an impressive exhibition that never loses momentum.

An emphatically artificial reproduction of the Babylonian Ishtar Gate looms imposingly over the exhibition space.  The original gate, over 2,500 years old, once admitted visitors into the gated city of Babylon.  But between 1899 and 1912, the gate was excavated by a German archaeologist, disassembled, and re-assembled in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.  Damaged or missing bricks were replaced with replicas, rendering the restored gates largely inauthentic.  Rakowitz’s reproduction mimics the characteristic blue glaze of the original gate with blue food packaging from Middle-eastern restaurants in Berlin, and the grandeur of the original now becomes something almost kitsch.   It’s clearly inauthentic, but serves as an interesting metaphor for the original gate, now largely fitted with replica bricks and, situated in a museum in Berlin, entirely divorced from its original context.

Michael Rakowitz, May the Arrogant Not Prevail, 2010. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Marshall Field’s by exchange. Image courtesy of the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

 

Rakowitz’s cardboard and newspaper reproductions of artifacts from Bagdad’s National Museum of Iraq are both art and documentation.  In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the National Museum was pillaged by looters.  With help from the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute’s database, Rakowitz recreated exact-scale replicas of many of the 7,000 objects which still remain missing.  The ongoing project will not be complete until all the missing artifacts are replicated. Though mere paper and cardboard surrogates, these objects are nevertheless displayed as if they’re original artifacts alongside identification cards giving the name, date, size, and media of the corresponding original object.  In addition to documenting these missing artifacts as collateral damage, this work addresses a myriad of issues related to cultural preservation and cultural exchange; many artifacts in the world’s great museums, after all, might plausibly qualify as loot (the Elgin Marbles spring to mind as a particularly famous case in point).

Installation view, Michael Rakowitz: Backstroke of the West, MCA Chicago September 16, 2017—March 4, 2018 What Dust Will Rise?, 2012 Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

 

His project What Dust Will Rise is conceptual art at its absolute finest. In 2012, the Taliban destroyed the centuries-old Buddhas of Bamiyan on the grounds that they were idolatrous.  From the debris of these Buddhas, Rakowitz created stone replicas of famous books from the Hesse-Kassel state library that were destroyed in a British air raid during the Second World War.  Though technically sculptures of books, they’re also reminiscent of cemetery headstones—monuments to things irretrievably lost.  Surrounding the books are display cases holding small, tactfully chosen fragments of rubble: pieces from the Buddhas of Bamiyan, a brick from the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, a fragment of floor from the World Trade Center, and trinitite formed from liquid sand during an American nuclear bomb test in New Mexico.  While avoiding moral equivalencies, it’s a fascinating, albeit sobering and perhaps incriminatory, visual essay on civilization’s capacity for destruction as well as creation.

Installation view, Michael Rakowitz: Backstroke of the West, MCA Chicago September 16, 2017—March 4, 2018 What Dust Will Rise?, 2012 Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

 

Rakowitz’s ability to work across such varied media is impressive.  Several of his projects are even supplemented with detailed graphic-novel style narratives and commentary.  For this exhibition, Rakowitz wrote and illustrated the booklet Strike the Empire Back, which offers supplemental commentary and background on some of the show’s more unsettling instances of East/West cultural exchange, such as Uday Hussein’s choice to adopt Darth Vader’s helmet for the Fedayeen. “Backstroke of the West” is both conceptually interesting and visually satisfying, offering thought-provoking case studies revealing the inevitable messiness of cultural exchange that occurred (and continues to occur) between cultures during flashpoints of history.

“Backstroke of the West” is on view through March 4.  More information on the show can be found here, including a PDF version of Rakowitz’s booklet Strike the Empire Back.

Jonathan Rinck

Set dresser Matt Brooks makes landscapes from found fabrics in Kubo’s cemetery set.KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS ©2016, TWO STRINGS, LLC

In the shadows of the far side of the cavernous space, are rows of faces. Or more precisely, rows of a face. One row of twenty-four tiny faces, formed in plastic by a 3D printer, becomes one face. Each photographed, then pulsed together in a burst of twenty-four frames per second, becomes a single second of film— the illusion of motion depicted in moving light projected onto a screen. Viewed as if pulled back from that film-to-be, the faces on the wall appear as moments frozen in time. The smallest syllables of spoken words, hanging on the small, painted lips of the characters. The subtle topologies of facial expressions, caught in a stasis, so that we might examine them. But they are not moments. Those moments never existed.

They are moments envisioned and meticulously created by the crew of stop-motion animation company LAIKA, now on display at the Portland Art Museum’s Animating Life: The Art, Science, and Wonder of LAIKA exhibition. While the show is likely to be a hit with fans of LAIKA’s four feature-length films, for someone like myself who hasn’t seen any of the films, the exhibit also provides a window into the process of connecting digital and physical sculptural techniques, in order to create a world where none existed at all.

Installation view of Animating Life, images courtesy of Portland Art Museum, photo by Steven Wong Jr.

 

At one point in our technological history, it was revolutionary to draw or sculpt completely within the digital confines of a computer, as opposed to using physical mediums. In the last ten years, 3D printing caused a new revolution, as the content of digital files have been more easily rendered into physical materials through additive manufacturing. LAIKA’s work casts itself between these separate domains of digital and physical. First, characters faces are drawn on a computer. Then, the faces are 3D printed in thermoplastic, and finished by hand. Next, in sequence, the physical models are digitally photographed. The digital images are spliced together, digitally rendered, and finished with effects. And lastly, that digital series of images is projected back in physical light, onto the cinema screen.

Installation view of Animating Life, images courtesy of Portland Art Museum, photo by Steven Wong Jr.

 

Somewhere between all of these technological teleportations, the “magic,” the “lifelike quality,” of stop-motion animation gains that power. In the 140 years between Eadweard Muybridge first used a succession of cameras to capture the motion of a running horse in still images, and then animated those images to simulate the running motion, sculptural and imaging technologies have advances incredibly. And yet the magic is the same.

Installation view of Animating Life, images courtesy of Portland Art Museum, photo by Steven Wong Jr.

 

In the exhibit, we see not just the faces, but all manner of art forms used to create this magic. There is an 18-foot puppet, expansive sets filled with exquisitely handmade objects, case upon case of handcrafted costumed, engineered puppet skeletons, clever contraptions for roiling seas, rampaging monsters, and reveals of the tiniest details that the vast army of artists (seventy people work in the rapid prototyping department alone) have included into the overall picture. But despite all of these magnificent examples of art, the actual finished product, the film itself, is not visible. The sum of the parts, is not the whole. Without that overlap between physical and digital, the magic cannot occur. As intricate and beautiful as these individual works are, the spellbinding quality of each face upon the wall, without the film that drives the entire machinery as its motive force, the pieces would never have existed alone.

By Adam Rothstein

Installation shot, courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art

The Toledo Museum of Art is ground zero for the Studio Glass Movement of the 1960s, which had modest beginnings in a garage on the TMA’s campus.  Although women were integral to the movement, their work originally attracted less attention than that of their male counterparts.  In recent years, this is no longer the case, and the Toledo Art Museum’s exhibition Fired Up is a celebration of the robust international presence of female glassblowers.   Fifty works comprise this exhibition, the first in America to shine the spotlight on glass art by contemporary female glass artists.  The show isn’t bound by any particular theme, but all the works on view are emphatically aesthetic objects, entirely nonfunctional, and playfully push the boundaries of the medium beyond what many of us are likely used to seeing, revealing the surprising and perhaps under-appreciated versatility of glass. 

Karen LaMonte (American, born 1967), Dress Impression with Train. Glass, cast, sandblasted, acid-polished, designed 2005; cast 2007. H. 58 1/4 in. (148 cm); W. 22 1/2 in. (57 cm); D. 43 1/4 in. (110 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, by exchange, 2008.148

 

The exhibition’s venue is the TMA’s glass pavilion, its chic minimalist aesthetic the collaborative efforts of Tokyo-based architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.  Nearly all its interior and exterior walls are made of glass, and there’s not a right-angle in the entire building, making the space seem at once disorienting and ethereal.  On a clear day, the glass sculptures within are dramatically backlit by the sun, an all-natural special-effect that allows the colored glass to lucidly blaze at full intensity.

The works in Fired Up playfully flaunt the surprising dexterity of the medium.  April Surgent’s Sea Ice Moves in Spring, inspired by her residency at the American Science Foundation, is an atmospheric and moody tryptic portraying, with photographic intensity, floating chunks of a melting iceberg, calling attention to endangered ecosystems.  The work is made of glass, but seems just as easily classifiable as a painting.  Similarly, Flag, a collaborative work between Laura de Santilliana and Maestro Simone Cenedese, though freestanding like a sculpture, is a contentious evocation of a Mark Rothko painting.

Installation shot, courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art

 

Emily Brock’s sculptural diorama-like portrayals of a bakery and a café are a playful tour de force.  Possessing all the anecdotal nuance of a Norman Rockwell painting, her unpeopled dioramas of 1950s-era commercial spaces are staggeringly detailed.   We see pastries, cheeses, and meats on display, tables in need of bussing, and even crumbs on the floor.  Though people are absent, their recent presence is implied.  In her Diner, we see an open newspaper on the counter, an apron lying on the floor, and the door to the kitchen (or is it an exit?) ajar.  As with all her work, Brock teasingly suggests a narrative, but ultimately leaves its interpretation up to the viewer.

The exhibition’s pièce de résistance is Karen LaMonte’s Glass Dress, a free-standing gown, its contours and sinuous folds enveloping, it seems, an invisible figure standing in elegant contrapposto.  It works beautifully as a purely aesthetic work of art in its own right, but the sculpture also comments on fashion as an exterior shell that, like a suit of armor, variously masks and accentuates the person within.  It also brings to mind the extent to which the clothes and brands one wears define one’s personality and social standing.

Installation shot, courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art

 

We interact with glass continually, especially taking into consideration the LED screens on our computers and smartphones which virtually run our lives.  But outside the gallery, glass seems like a medium we only encounter for its functionality.  Fired Up demonstrates that this is unfortunate, given glass’s unusual properties (behaving both as liquid and solid) and its undeniable, luminous beauty.

Fired up is on view at the Toledo Museum of Art through March 18.  Information about the museum’s Glass Pavilion can be found here.

By Jonathan Rinck

Ileana Sonnabend’s tastes were conceptual and unorthodox. By exhibiting and collecting Arte Povera artists, she influenced many in the United States and Europe. In addition, Sonnabend introduced American artists, including Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, at her Paris gallery in the 1960s and at the Venice Biennale. Germano Celant, the curator and critic who defined Arte Povera in 1967, has spent decades documenting its artists: Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Gilberto Zorio – all men. Marisa Merz was included in other solo and Arte Povera venues.

Installation view of Ileana Sonnabend and Arte Povera: Curated by Germano Celant, on view at Lévy Gorvy from 11. 2 – 12.23.17. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy, Photography by Tom Powel (Merz Igloo on left, Zorio on right.)

 

This catalog contextualizes their exhibitions by  interspersing these artists’ works and comments  into lists of all artists whom Sonnabend showed between  1962-2014.  Celant’s and Sonnabend’s 50-year friendship gave Arte Povera its roots and its audience.  This comprehensive overview of Sonnabend’s unconventional exhibitions and collection reminds us that liberated arts patrons are rare and occasionally affect  art markets.

The catalog’s cardboard outer cover and earthy blue/green/grey-toned inside cover demonstrate how Arte Povera artists used simple materials viscerally.  The texture, materials, and hues are notable as is Celant’s organization. First he establishes the context of his fruitful friendship with Sonnabend and her impact on the art world. Next: chronological images and artist statements show each artist’s significant works between 1962 and 2014. It is clear that Celant and many others devoted considerable hours and research to giving this catalog its strong presence.

As Celant describes the art scene’s rivalries and its shift from Paris and Europe to New York, he places Ileana Sonnabend at the apex of promoting internationalism: “Ileana provided a broad vision that was not only expansionist but also oriented toward globalization” (p.21). Celant became the historian documenting the rise of the new artists, writing a detailed monograph about 32-year-old Giulio Paolini for Sonnabend Press in 1972.

Installation view of Pier Paolo Calzolari, Sonnabend Gallery, New York, 1971, showing ABSTRACT IN YOUR HOME (1970). Photograph Harry Shunk © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20)

 

Pier Paolo Calzolari’s first exhibition in New York featured ABSTRACT IN YOUR HOME (1970), a triangular neon wall work with four bare mattresses. In a rambling essay punctuated by the phrase, “I’d like to let you know,”  he enthused, “I want expansion democracy madness alchemy insanity rhythm horizontality… I desire to be elementary… to commit acts of passion…”  Calzolari’s neon and mixed media installations play with horizontality, with each  room’s architecture, and with viewers’ imaginations.

Michelangelo Pistoletto was the artist who introduced Sonnabend and Celant to many of his Italian peers. His search to merge image and reality led him to develop paintings on mirrors in which viewers seem to interact with painted images of scenes from everyday life. In a 1964 writing, he mused, “Indeed, since it is not physically possible for me to enter, to investigate the structure of art I must bring the picture into reality, creating the fiction of being on the other side of the mirror” (p. 37).

Mario Merz was known for his Igloo first shown in New York in 1971. This primitive transparent small structure with a neon sign about the Fibonacci code (1 + 1 = 2) made a big impact on the arts community, and its larger iterations seem, to me, like an early version of Louise Bourgeois’ spiders.  The first igloo was exhibited at Lévy Gorvy in its distressed state, but originally, it was intact.

Mario Merz, Igloo, 1971, Steel tubes, neon tubing, wire mesh, transformer, and C-clamps, 39 3/8 x 78 ¾ x 78 ¾ inches (100 x 200 x 200 cm). Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2001

 

Jannis Kounellis staged many installations and performances at Sonnabend .  He wrote that Ileana Sonnabend “…allowed artists freedom in making exhibitions, and this was significant.  Ileana never interfered.” (p. 182) He wrote in 1975, “Tradition does not mean exaltation of the past, but the need to order actions anew so as to have a present and not a mistake. Credibility comes from the values you reveal within an operation in the present” (p. 220). For one exhibition, Kounellis painted the gallery walls yellow, wore a white mask, and rode in on a horse.  In 1980, he filled the gallery with large sheets of ghost paintings inspired by Munch. By 1987, Kounellis was saying,  I have wanted only very beautiful things.

I have measured the distance from the objective.

I have seen the sacred in the common object. (p.272)

Installation view of Ileana Sonnabend and Arte Povera: Curated by Germano Celant, on view at Lévy Gorvy from 11. 2 – 12.23.17. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy, Photography by Tom Powel (Merz Igloo on left, Zorio on right.)

 

Gilberto Zorio’s art was perhaps the most elementary  and surprising. It was tactile, it could hiss, be heavy, be above one’s head, or constrict movement.  His untitled black object hanging near the ceiling is attached to ropes that are, in turn, attached to the tops of walls in a spider-like formation; the ropes then dangle down to conger both nooses and lifelines. This catalog captures the spirit and character of Arte Povera.

By Jan Garden Castro

Ileana Sonnabend and Arte Povera
Edited by Germano Celant
New York: Lévy Gorvy Gallery, also through ARTBOOK/D.A.P.
Texts: Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Germano Celant, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Gilberto Zorio.
347 pages; $80. ISBN: 978-1-944379-19-3

Ai Weiwei Circle Fence, 2017 Powder coated mild steel, polypropylene netting Courtesy of the artist Photo: Timothy Schenck, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY On view as part of the citywide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, presented by Public Art Fund October 12, 2017-February 11, 2018

Ai Weiwei’s Public Art Fund exhibit employs fences as an extended metaphor for increasing barriers around the world. Three large shapes and over 300 smaller art works — bus station shelters, wall art, and lamp post banners — span the five boroughs. One large work, Gilded Cage, is a dome-shaped bird-cage-like soaring structure with about five subway turnstile mini-structures inside. The cage door faces Central Park as its see-through silhouette displays the Plaza Hotel and luxury Fifth Avenue businesses. As we know, even high end companies in Manhattan have entry level jobs for sales clerks and cleaning people. It’s unlikely the lower-paid employees can afford to live in Manhattan. This cage’s transparency reminds us that street vendors and entry-level employees daily work alongside executives and well-heeled customers and clients.

Ai Weiwei Arch, 2017 Galvanized mild steel and mirror polished stainless steel Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio/ Frahm & Frahm Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY On view as part of the citywide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, presented by Public Art Fund October 12, 2017-February 11, 2018

 

A second 37-foot tall cage rises under the Washington Square Park arch  near where the artist lived for about 12 years starting in 1982. This area has changed over 25 years and no longer has the same numbers of immigrants; the cage here hints that it’s harder to get around the restrictions of entry into USA and life in the Village where Ai, along with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and many other talents, got their start as young artists.  The third large structure is a 1000-foot-long circular fence around the Unisphere in Queens. One can sit or play in it, yet as it circles the globe, it reminds us that immigrants worldwide are being fenced in or out.  Smaller wire structures that dot the five boroughs are not openly oppressive, and some offer seating or shelter. So fences as a symbol, metaphor, and trope provide a platform for discussion – a beautifully crafted reminder about our disparate neighborhoods and increasing security to travel and even to enter buildings. In some ways, fencing materials exemplify the differences between grand high rises on Fifth Avenue, tenements on the Lower East Side, and family neighborhoods in Queens. We all live in proscribed spaces, and fewer and fewer leave their doors unlocked or open.

Ai Weiwei Gilded Cage, 2017 Mild steel, paint Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio/ Frahm & Frahm Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY On view as part of the citywide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, presented by Public Art Fund October 12, 2017-February 11, 2018

 

The banners with the faces of immigrants are on lamp posts, yet even this symbol of hope is muted. Each immigrant’s name is on a sign, but the Public Art Fund information takes up a larger part of the sign. Since the images are pixilated, they are half there and half air, so they are as easy to miss as they are to see. This is a different trope or a way of suggesting presence and absence at the same time. The banners shine a ‘light’ on immigrants and their plight, but only if the passersby look up and pay attention. And even then, what good will that do? This art project cannot help immigrants directly, but it is positioned to address the issue that immigrants are a global concern in a way that is metaphorical, non-threatening, and engaging.

Ai Weiwei Banner 112, 2017 CNC-cut Polymar truck tarp Courtesy of the artist Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY On view as part of the citywide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, presented by Public Art Fund October 12, 2017-February 11, 2018

 

Weiwei’s other art projects cover a wide range. The artist directly immerses himself in his latest film, Human Flow, shot as he visited twenty-four countries where viewers can glimpse the suffering of some of the 65 million displaced people today, many of whom live in unsanitary conditions with inadequate food and shelter. No one would choose this life. This is a global crisis. The United States is involved due to its participation in bombings in Syria and acts of war the public may not know about such at troops in Niger. In his New School talk sponsored by the New York Times, Ai related that his curiosity/concerns as a human being drove him and a crew of over 200 to research and make this film. It has been strongly criticized in Germany where Ai lives in exile when he is not on the road. Ai’s prison experiences, his exile from China, and the imprisonment and disappearances of his friends there drive home the plight of many inside and outside the countries where they were born.

Ai Weiwei Harlem Shelter 3, 2017 Galvanized mild steel Courtesy of the artist Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY On view as part of the citywide exhibition Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, presented by Public Art Fund October 12, 2017-February 11, 2018

 

Anyone familiar with Ai Weiwei’s major exhibitions knows they are labor-intensive, rooted in cultural histories, and extensively researched and crafted. Those four points add up to a fifth: Ai’s arts variously address universal human rights. At the Brooklyn Museum, Ai recreated his incarceration, the tiny dimensions of his cell, and the guards who watched him night and day, leaving him no privacy or dignity.  At Miami’s Perez Museum (PAM) opening exhibit, Weiwei offered a huge range of works intermixing past, present, and future moments: from bicycle towers to the names of school children killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (his protests over their deaths led to his arrest) to his many ways of turning centuries-old crafts into “art.” For example, a Han Dynasty vase overpainted with a Coca Cola logo exemplifies how American advertising has perverted Chinese values, how propaganda can wipe out traditions, and how Ai uses a gimmick to draw attention to something old that has been lost. Ai has been widely criticized for imitating a drowned infant on a beach; this crass act no doubt quadrupled the number of people who became aware of the loss of this tiny life.

All of this leads to my and Ai’s next point. Ai told a reporter, “My art in principle is about crossing the lines. My privilege is to represent people who are dying, in prison [unable to speak out].” Each time Ai crosses the line, he makes points germane to Chinese, American, and world cultures/histories. His 1980s experiences in New York are just as important as growing up as the son of an exiled and silenced Chinese dissident poet. Ai’s approach can be uncomfortable; it oversteps the boundaries of traditional processes, subjects, materials, and genres. For this and other reasons, some dislike or dismiss Ai’s art. It is unfamiliar. It is confrontational. It challenges us to do more than stand inside or outside the cage.

By Jan Garden Castro

Auguste Rodin (French, Paris 1840–1917 Meudon) The Thinker Founder: Cast by Alexis Rudier (French) Modeled ca. 1880, cast ca. 1910 Bronze Overall (wt. confirmed): 27 5/8 in., 185 lb. (70.2 cm, 83.9 kg) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Thomas F. Ryan, 1910

In 1877 at the Paris Salon, Rodin’s Age of Bronze was considered so lifelike that skeptical artists and viewers alike circulated the defamatory rumor that Rodin had simply submitted a bronze made directly from a cast of his model, and the sculpture was ignominiously removed from the show.  After the artist subsequently furnished proof that he had indeed modeled the sculpture by hand, it was displayed again the following year, and the work, originally titled The Vanquished, became Rodin’s breakout triumph. 

In Rodin’s retrospective at the Metropolitan Art Museum, The Age of Bronze is the literal and thematic centerpiece of over fifty marbles, bronzes, plasters, and terracottas which collectively demonstrate Rodin’s Shakespearian grasp of the human condition.  Displayed in the Gerald Cantor Sculpture Gallery, recently refurbished and re-painted a dark blue specifically to accent the patina of Rodin’s bronzes, this exhibition commemorates both Rodin’s centenary and the Met’s own century-long history of collecting his work.

Auguste Rodin (French, Paris 1840–1917 Meudon) Orpheus and Eurydice Modeled probably before 1887, carved 1893 Overall (confirmed (wt. on pallet)): 48 3/4 × 31 1/8 × 25 3/8 in., 914 lb. (123.8 × 79.1 × 64.5 cm, 414.6 kg) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Thomas F. Ryan, 1910

 

Loosely arranged both chronologically and thematically, one end of the lengthy corridor-gallery features generally optimistic works, such as a large marble version of The Hand of God, in which we see the Creator’s hand shaping an indeterminate, lifeless human form.  It was this sculpture that so emotionally moved Gerald Cantor in 1946, beginning what he called his “magnificent obsession” with the artist.  His foundation later gifted many Rodins to the Met.

Many sculptural ensembles portray mythological love. In Cupid and Psyche, Eternal Spring (originally also called Cupid and Psyche), and Pygmalion and Galatea, Rodin depicts each pair in an erotic embrace.  But though the subjects are classically inspired, they’re emphatically modern; Rodin audaciously leaves each vignette calculatedly unfinished.  Smooth torsos dissolve into rough marble, and the surfaces of his figures seem roughed in like a sketch in three-dimensions, but the effect is that they seem to ripple and pulsate with energy.

Progressing toward the other end of the gallery, the subject matter becomes increasingly dark and weighty, verging on the sublime.  We encounter studies for the Burgers of Calais, a moving ensemble depicting doomed French elders walking toward their deaths, each emotionally responding in his own way.  Eve, expelled from the Garden of Eden, pathetically attempts to cover her exposed flesh, unnervingly seeming to be painfully aware of the gaze of sympathetic onlookers.  Things crescendo with vignettes from The Gates of Hell, for which Rodin sculpted a teaming mass of writhing souls languishing in a Dante-inspired inferno. The Thinker, likely the most recognized and reproduced figure on the Gates, originally dispassionately sat above the fray, stoically contemplating the fate of the damned below.

Auguste Rodin (French, Paris 1840–1917 Meudon)Eternal Spring, modeled ca. 1881, carved 1907 Modeled ca. 1881, carved 1907
Marble Overall (wt. confirmed): 28×29×18 in., 433 lb. (71.1 × 73.7 × 45.7 cm, 196.4
kg) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher, 1917

 

Rodin at the Met offers a rare chance to see Rodin on paper; an adjacent gallery contains some drawings and watercolors. These reveal a broad stylistic range. The Golden Age is a dead-ringer for an old-master drawing from the Renaissance, a world apart from the wispy, hurriedly sketched-in forms of Ugolino and His Sons.  And his Nude figure on Hands and Knees seems to anticipate the reductive figures we might later expect from Matisse.

Auguste Rodin (French, Paris 1840–1917 Meudon) The Age of Bronze Founder: Cast by Alexis Rudier (French) Modeled 1876, cast ca. 1906 Bronze Overall (wt. confirmed): 72 in., 275 lb. (182.9 cm, 124.7 kg) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John W. Simpson, 1907

 

For me, the most impressive of Rodin’s works are his studies, never intended for display.  He seemed to possess an uncanny ability to imbue his sculptures with soul, even if his works were merely limbs or torsos.  His dramatic Clenched Left Hand (Study for Hand of Pierre de Wiessant) certainly seems to prove the point, as Rodin argued, that hands can be every bit expressive as the face.

Both Greeks and Romans told the story of Pygmalion, an artist who became so enamored with the figure he was sculpting that the goddess Venus magically granted the figure the gift of life.  It’s a subject Rodin himself depicted in a work on view at the Met. But Rodin gave Pygmalion his own aged features and — lest the message not be emphatically clear — chiseled his own name alongside Pygmalion’s on the base.  Were any other sculptor to make the audacious comparison with the fabled Greek artisan, whose sculpture literally sprang to life, such a claim could be dismissively ignored as hyperbolic self-aggrandizement.  But this is Rodin, and the comparison is spot-on.

Rodin at the Met runs through January 15, 2018.  Digital content related to the show can be accessed here.

By Jonathan Rinck

Courtesy of the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco. Photography by Henrik Kam.

Guest curator Mariah Nielson is no stranger to the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design in the Dogpatch District. Her knowledge of the intimate, two room space has enabled the exhibit to offer a substantial source of insight towards the creative practice of architecture and design studios. Nielson selected studios that offer a cohesive pragmatism and exciting diversity by individualized processes for a global impact.

The history of the architectural pavilion is likely as old as architecture has been a field of study and expertise. With various nuances in characteristic and purpose, the pavilion as explored in “Architectural Pavilions” is a temporary structure important for the planning process yet smaller in scale or footprint to the final construction. The pavilion has the ability to exist as a stand alone structure on the periphery of a larger complex or an object of aesthetic pleasure.  One of the more historically significant pavilions is Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, a large permanent structure designed for the first World’s Fair of 1851 in London that later burned down. It achieved the goal of allowing the public to envision future possibilities of life through architecture and community design. Artist and designer Buckminster Fuller embraced the concept of the pavilion in the 20th century to design and build permanent structures from pre-fabricated parts in his geodesic domes. Hippie Modernism, a recent exhibition with elements of 1960s and 70s architecture goals of modularity, community and sustainability in design featured Fuller’s work with a review found here.

Courtesy of the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco. Photography by Henrik Kam.

 

The seven designers or firms in “Architectural Pavilions” constitute an intimate survey of multifaceted design process and what a pavilion can be. The selected models are of various materials ranging from paper, wire, and glue to computer aided drawings, video, photography, and full-scale sculptural prototypes in wood and steel. The viewer travels through an all-encompassing physical and conceptual space to gather information. While each group demonstrates a difference in materials and processes, all consider material use in a world of limited resources, more so than would appear in other periods. Finding the most efficient use of material, reclaimed or repurposing in some instances and developing smart materials that adapt to the immediate environment are all options on the table as the designers remain at the forefront of dialogue surrounding climate change and positive human interaction with the environment. In most of the examples, this economy of material and design lends itself to a delicate aesthetics where the boundary between interior and exterior space is eliminated almost entirely.

Courtesy of the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco. Photography by Henrik Kam.

 

About half of the groups work in experimental design labs or as cooperatives with fluctuating teams. The mobility can ensure faster input from a larger network of people in an increasingly digital world. This characteristic also lends itself to the appearance in modularity and community involvement within the design work. Multidisciplinary think tanks that are focusing on a wider range of social impacts by aesthetic design and practical, material use incorporating artists, architects, engineers, ecologists and scientists among other specialists. The role in educating the general public is a bold statement of cooperation and practical solutions to complex socio-political and economic issues that we share worldwide.

Featured Architecture Studios:

Carmody Groarke
DOSU Studio Architecture
Future Cities Lab
IwamotoScott Architecture
Jay Nelson
Materials & Applications (M&A)
SITU
Warren Techentin Architecture

San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design
https://sfmcd.org

By Jake Weigel

Installation view, Chicago Works: Amanda Williams, MCA Chicago. July 18 – December 31, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Upon first glance, Amanda Williams’s Reliquary 1: To Unlearned People This May Seem to be Full of Nothing and Void of Humanity looks exactly as described in the title. Cut from sheets of plywood, the piece appears like a small house, constructed from panels painted white, and consisting mostly of void, where the wood has been removed. However, on closer examination, one can see that each sheet of plywood is actually a figure — the rectangular holes represent lots, the wood that remains represents streets, and the entire house is folded from the flat surface of a map. This is a house that has been built from a map of Englewood, a neighborhood in South Chicago.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago’s exhibition, “Chicago Works: Amanda Williams” showcases a number of the artist’s pieces that play with the distinction between space and representation, between architecture and sculpture, and between three dimensions and two dimensions. While the work is quite conceptual, it is also highly engaging, and draws the viewer into an investigation of how space, architecture, representation, and cities work in the context of Chicago.

Installation view, Chicago Works: Amanda Williams, MCA Chicago. July 18 – December 31, 2017. Work shown: Amanda Williams and Noah J Williams, Reliquary II: LOT 49 IN THE SUBDIVISION OF BLOCK 1 IN WRIGHT, EMBREE AND AYRE’S, A SUBDIVISION OF BLOCK 33 IN SCHOOL TRUSTEES’ SUBDIVISION OF SECTION 16, TOWNSHIP 36 NORTH, RANGE 14 EAST OF THE THIRD PRINCIPAL MERIDIAN, IN COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS. C/K/A: Noah’s Toybox, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

 

For example, seeing images from Williams’ Color(ed) Theory Suite, it is impossible not to be engaged by the notion of a boarded-up house painted bright purple, in the case of Crown Royal Bag, or deep orange, as in Flamin’ Red Hots. Williams chose these colors in “color palettes” that she assembled from found detritus in the streets, and then with community help, painted abandoned homes in that color, before the homes were eventually torn down and destroyed. This work can only be seen in photographs and video documentation now, but Williams also saved some of the painted wreckage, and repurposed it into sculptural works in the gallery. What once was the background color of the street, became the exterior color of a building, which then became rubble, which then became art again. In between these transitions, the notion of what a neighborhood looks like, used to look like, and ought to look like, evolves with Williams’s aid.

In A Dream of Substance, a Beamer, a Necklace, or Freedom? she takes that neighborhood exterior as template once again, building a small enclosure from white gallery walls in the exact proportions of a typical Englewood lot. Enlisting community help again, the inside of that space was coated in imitation gold leaf. But one cannot enter this space in the gallery, only peer into it through narrow spaces. The negative space, filled with alluring color, represents a South Chicago space that most who attend the MCA show will never see in actuality, but only in representation. It too is only image, even as it remains three dimensional.

Crown Royal Bag from Color(ed) Theory Suite, 2014–16. Courtesy of the artist and McCormick Gallery

 

In her Chicago is Iraq? Series, Williams overlays paper cuts of neighborhood maps inside the hollow shape of a map of Iraq’s borders, to draw attention to the popular nomenclature “Chiraq”, used to both disparage and celebrate violent crime in South Chicago. In these pieces, mapped space is used most literally, represented in two-dimensional paper, And yet three-dimensional space is created, reminding us that regardless of the politics of the nomenclature, South Chicago and Iraq are both, still, spaces. They are not simply maps, analogous or not, but places, where people live, and experience violence before the media that tries to contextualize that violence as acceptable or not.

The installation is relatively small, but the work, and the space it contains, is huge. An artist trained as an architect, Amanda Williams has a talent for condensing spaces into representations, while also questioning what that condensation means for the people who live within those spaces.

By Adam Rothstein

Installation view, Chicago Works: Amanda Williams, MCA Chicago. July 18 – December 31, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Artist and architect Amanda Williams likely never expected her public art project Color(ed) Theory, for which she surreptitiously painted the exteriors of condemned houses in largely vacant Chicago neighborhoods, to garner significant attention.  But in 2015, the Chicago Architectural Biennial highlighted the ongoing project, suddenly giving it a platform with international reach.   In her first solo exhibition, Color(ed) Theory is featured alongside other recent multimedia works by Williams at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Chicago Works: Amanda Williams is an intimate exhibition featuring photography, sculpture, and site-specific instillations which considers the history of Chicago’s South Side and explores the narrative and nature of urban decay.  In making these works, she frequently collaborates with local Chicagoans, encouraging literal conversation about urban space.

Amanda Williams, Flamin’ Red Hots from Color(ed) Theory Suite, 2014–16. Courtesy of the artist/ McCormick Gallery

 

Color(ed) Theory is a body of work informed by architectural historian Colin Rowe (who championed architecture that responds to local histories) and painter Josef Albers (whose work famously made the point ad infinitum that colors are fluid, always responding to their surroundings).  Williams found abandoned houses slated for demolition and painted them in uniform bright colors, each color associated with a specific product common in South Chicago’s commercial culture (ranging from the purple of a Crown Royal bag to the ubiquitous vibrant yellow of a check-cashing and currency exchange outlet).

As the ongoing project gained notoriety, increasingly more people turned out to help paint each successive house, bringing people into the area that might not otherwise venture into Chicago’s South Side.  All the houses were eventually demolished as planned, but the project lives on through photographic documentation, though a wood-lattice from the Flamin’ Red Hots house occupies part of the MCA gallery space, serving as both sculpture and relic.

Installation view, Chicago Works: Amanda Williams, MCA Chicago. July 18 – December 31, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

 

Several works on view use gold as a vehicle to address topics ranging from housing/income inequality, property value, and the very nature of the trust-based gold standard.  In the center of the gallery space sits the wittily titled It’s a Gold Mine; Is the Gold Mine?, a pallet of bricks from a demolished home, each covered with artificial (yet convincing) gold leaf, seeming to transform the bricks, with their urban, working-class associations, into the very substance of wealth.

Gold also features in a site-specific installation created in collaboration with South Chicago locals.  It’s a room with the same dimensions as a typical working-class residential lot, its interior walls completely lined with imitation gold-leaf.  In the absence of a door, a gap in the wall allows inquisitive viewers to peek inside, but is too small to pass through, and the glimmer remains tantalizingly out of reach.

Installation view, Chicago Works: Amanda Williams, MCA Chicago. July 18 – December 31, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

 

A final body of work, Chicago is Iraq?, comments on the controversial moniker “Chiraq,” a term likening Chicago to a war-zone, and a word dispersed in music and film through personalities such as Niki Minaj and Spike Lee.  Williams takes laser-cut maps of neighborhood streets from Chicago neighborhoods and, in shadowboxes, overlays them with maps of Iraq, the country’s sinuous highways contrasting with the starkly rectilinear streets of Chicago’s neighborhoods.

Amanda Williams creates highly conceptual sculpture using the visual language of architecture, and her works lend themselves to varied interpretations.  Since home ownership has generally been integral to the proverbial American dream and a source of wealth accumulation across generations, her work inevitably makes us consider the discriminatory redlining and restrictive covenants which so decisively gave shape to Chicago’s demographics. Even so, her art possesses an understated optimism; the subtle but important question mark punctuating Chicago is Iraq? is infinitely more hopeful in this context than its declarative counterpart (also, and not incidentally, it implies dialogue with the viewer).  And while her work doesn’t presume to offer answers to the problem of urban decay, it serves as a platform to, as she states, “spark conversations that lead to ideas that lead to solutions.”

Amanda Williams: Chicago Works is on view at the MCA until December 31.

By Jonathan Rinck

Recurring Chapters in the Book of Inevitable Outcomes by Brenda Mallory. Image courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

The Portland Art Museum’s Center for Contemporary Native Art is not a large space, but the curators always manage to squeeze a great deal of work into it, by working in multiple dimensions. This certainly holds true for the current Connecting Lines show, featuring Brenda Mallory (Cherokee Nation) and Luzene Hill (East Band Cherokee).

Up the stairs and around the corner, one finds a room blooming with sculpture and color. Luzene Hill’s Enate hangs on the wall, a bright garment dyed with cochineal. But the garment is more than what it appears— it is created from small silk figures, each representing one of the thousands of Native American women that are sexually assaulted each year. This detail hides within, as does the fact that this is only the number of women who report assault, and that this rate is triple that of other women in the United States.

Left: Enate by Luzene Hill. Right: Recurring Chapters in the Book of Inevitable Outcomes by Brenda Mallory. Image courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

 

Further details lurk in the gallery. At the back of the room, held in glass containers like biological samples, are cochineal themselves. These small insects played their own role in the history of colonization— the Spanish created a monopoly with this stark dye, fiercely guarding their lucrative secret that gave the world the color of Catholic cardinals’ robes, and the red of the British Red Coats.

In the rest of the room, Brenda Mallory’s Recurring Chapters in the Book of Inevitable Outcomes grows from the floor and ceiling, like another hidden facet of nature. Cloth coated in wax takes on an entirely different form, pierced by black steel, and assembled into bursting blooms and thick trunks. The sculptures extend below and above eye level, requiring the viewer to explore them each individually, or stand back in the small gallery in order to take them all in. At all levels, destruction and regrowth are equally represented.

Foreground: Recurring Chapters in the Book of Inevitable Outcomes by Brenda Mallory. Background: Cochineal shells in glass jars as part of Enate by Luzene Hill. Image courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

 

The Center for Contemporary Native Art stands out because of its invitation to enter an area of work that might otherwise be overlooked, but presenting the visitor with work that cannot be overlooked. Inside the bright space, one finds Native artists visibly identified on the vinyl wall labels by their tribal heritage. And then, adjacent, artwork purposefully informed by these heritage, even as it constructed in contemporary media. It is not “Native art” in the sense that some galleries portray it— as artifacts of people now long gone. And yet it is work done by artists of that genealogy, who represent themselves and their work as more points in a history that will always lead directly back to the present.

By Adam Rothstein

Takashi Murakami, Photo: Maria Ponce Berre, © MCA Chicago

According to Japanese folklore, a distressed octopus can chew off an injured leg and a new one will grow in its place.  Regeneration and re-invention are certainly subtexts at Takashi Murakami’s mid-career retrospective at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, but this sprawling exhibition also shows that while his work has certainly changed in form and focus, Murakami’s body of work, for all its emphatically contemporary, anime-inspired appearance, is, perhaps surprisingly, conscientiously rooted in hundreds of years of traditional Japanese visual culture.  

Installation view, Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats its Own Leg, MCA Chicago, June 6 – September 24, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

 

The Octopus Eats its Own Leg is arranged chronologically, showcasing over thirty years’ worth of work with an emphasis on Murakami’s paintings, though there are several prominent sculptural ensembles.  Some rarely-displayed early works reveal the extent of Murakami’s stylistic dexterity; his visceral Nuclear Power Picture could be a dead-ringer for a post-apocalyptic hellscape by Anselm Kiefer, but the straw and cardboard ground into the picture’s surface are also mixed with silver and gold mineral pigments, recalling traditional Nihonga brush-painting.  Textured, sinister, and dark, it’s also nearly the exact opposite of Murakami’s later anime-inspired paintings, all which began with the creation of the character “DOB.”

Often described as a sort of altar-ego, DOB, who appears in many incarnations throughout the retrospective, first began as the character that we see in whimsical paintings like ZuZaZaZaZaZa.  Against a background of red, the little creature propels skyward, leaving a sinuous white trail in its wake.  But there’s an economical gracefulness in this wispy composition which, like his Milk and Cream paintings, evokes the stylization of 19th century Japanese woodblock prints and the reductive elegance of a Haikou.

Takashi Murakami, ZuZaZaZaZaZa, 1994. Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas mounted on board, 59 x 67 in. (149.8 x 170.1 cm). Takahashi Collection. © 1994 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Photo: Norihiro Ueno.

 

DOB bursts into three dimensions in Strange Forest, a sculptural ensemble showing DOB skipping amongst anthropomorphic mushrooms; the tableau is surrounded by paintings of a highly-abstracted DOB rendered in the artist’s signature self-described “superflat” style.  In the playfully subversive spirit of Jeff Koons, the ensemble makes no pretense at being “high art,” instead commenting on the post-WWII Disnification of Japanese visual culture.  The mushrooms could just as likely reference the benign mushrooms in the 18th century handscroll paintings of Ito Jakuchu, or the much more sinister mushroom-cloud, the latter charged with its more recent and obvious historical resonance.  In any case, the google-eyed DOB famously had commercial appeal, and was dispersed on the mass-market in the form of plush toys, stickers, and, in 2006, even a line of Louis Vuitton handbags.

The final two rooms of the exhibition demark a change in the style and content of Murakami’s work, resultant from the devastating 2011 tsunami.  In response to such suffering and destruction, Murakami‘s work increasingly derives source-material from religion and spirituality.  His massive 500 Arhats is a hundred-meter long painted frieze of Japanese arhats– Buddhist monks who lived reclusive lives, publicly emerging only to comfort people in times of disaster.  Aged, withered, and wrinkled, they seem the complete antithesis of the bright, untextured, and generally upbeat works of Murakami’s superflat paintings.

Installation view, Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats its Own Leg, MCA Chicago, June 6 – September 24, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

 

500 Arhats  is flanked by two colossal, muscular club-wielding creatures on each end of the room.  Referencing the guardian Nio figures of the Buddhist pantheon, they’re embodiments of Um and A,  Sanskrit sounds signifying the timeless and universal forces of birth and death.  A final work addresses the 2011 tsunami directly in the sculpted form of a large gushing waterspout; but the water is uninviting and oily black, and seems more like a sinister tentacled creature, its tendrils wrapped around the many skulls we only notice upon close inspection.

The ease with which Murakami manages to fill the MCA’s spacious galleries testifies to his prodigious and driven work-ethic, though his many assistants employed at his Warholian studio, Kaikai Kiki Co., are equally deserving of credit.  Spanning thirty years, there are certainly many ironies and, perhaps, contradictions that emerge in Murakami’s work.  It’s contemporary, yet always informed by the past.  And while it critiques post-WWII consumer culture, it also became a part of it.  For me, though, perhaps the greatest irony is that such historical depth and, most recently, gravitas and textured introspection can coexist so naturally in the same collective body of work that brought us the bright and unapologetically cartoon-world of superflat.

Installation view, Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats its Own Leg, MCA Chicago, June 6 – September 24, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

 

The Octopus Eats its Own Leg is on view through September 24 and is accompanied by a lavish exhibition catalogue, replete with many helpful fold-out pages of Murakami’s larger paintings.

By Jonathan Rinck

Narrative Atlas, installation view at Studios, Inc., Kansas City, Missouri, May 2017.

Gerry Trilling’s most recent body of work, completed during a three-year residency at Studios, Inc. in Kansas City, is conversant with many artists reflecting on burdensome chapters of history through a personal lens.

“Narrative Atlas” included twenty 6” x 9” drawings/collages on flooring samples titled Plaques & Tangles and eleven “constructed paintings,” creating an installation in response to the large gallery space. Both series are the result of the artist’s working through familial memories: the first responses to her father’s dementia and recent passing; the latter tied to childhood and stories passed down about fleeing the Holocaust. Like most contemporary conceptual art, viewers will not make these autobiographical connections from any aesthetic cues. Trilling’s eclectic material choices––camouflage vinyl, faux fur, plastic fencing, liquid pvc––are tamed onto elegant square or rectangular stretchers, which she subsequently configures, sometimes out on to the floor. The artist showcases the surprising allure of banal materials; formalists will not be disappointed. Hinting at conceptual layers, Trilling opted to include snippets of texts interspersed throughout the gallery. These intensely moving narratives slowed one’s experience, communicating the weight of history being relayed through the abstract works. One read

My grandmother walked through Yugoslavia and took a ship to Palestine in 1944. On the ship she dreamed her husband and his family (all of whom had died) were telling her it wasn’t time yet. It so disturbed her that she went on deck to get some air.

The ship sank in the harbor. She escaped.

Gerry Trilling, Installation, fun fur, weed barrier fabric, plastic, fiber embedded plastic; dimensions variable (2017)

 

Thus, the texts are not sentimental, nor are the works illustrative, and the correlation is subjective. Trilling, born in 1946 in St. Louis, is a daughter of Jews who fled occupied Vienna in 1939. Her father opened a men’s outerwear business. Growing up surrounded by fabrics made her hyperaware of textures and patterns.

Gerry Trilling, Activated Shelter, fabric, pvc; 58” x 48” (2017)

Installation (2016) is comprised of four panels: a horizontal rectangle of orange and white fun fur attached to the wall, two panels leaning against the wall: one standing vertically wrapped in clear plastic, the other horizontal wrapped in dark grey weed barrier fabric; and a smaller panel hanging to the right, stretched with orange fiber-embedded plastic netting. The contrasts of flourescent colors on top and ashen colors on the bottom, as well as a soft inviting furry texture next to cold and dirty-looking plastics create stark polarities, easily suggesting the coexistence of life and death.

Though not necessarily influences, Trilling cites Sigmar Polke and Blinky Palermo as two artists she has always admired for their bold curiosity and inventive juxtapositions. She also acknowledges a strong connection to women artists who produced work from private psychological spaces, such as Eva Hesse. (Trilling and Hesse would have had amazing conversations about materiality!) The late German artist may have been most intrigued by Trilling’s Activated Shelter (2017). This impractical half-tent is a piece of fabric with red and yellow zig-zag lines stretched between two 58” pvc pipes, leaning tediously against a wall.

The artist travels extensively and collects pieces of material culture from around the world. Her continuously evolving studio practice incorporates these finds with personal memories, which viewers easily relate to their own narratives, as well as broader historical frameworks.

“Narrative Atlas” ran May 12 to June 16. Follow the artist on her website, gerrytrilling.com.

By Andrea Ferber

Photo credit: City of Chicago

Few cities do public art as well as Chicago.  Place the point of a giant compass at the intersection of State and Madison, and a circle with a radius of about 1,000 yards will encompass works by Calder, Picasso, Dubuffet, Chagall, Miro, Richard Hunt, Jaume Plensa and Anish Kapoor. Through April 2018, a public installation of sculptures by artist Chakaia Booker fills the Boeing Gallery, a comfortably shaded outdoor promenade that runs the length of Chicago’s Millennium Park.  These seven steel and rubber sculptures manage to remain lighthearted and invitingly interactive, though much of Chakaia Booker’s oeuvre is freighted with poignant allusions to race, class, and social mobility.    

Rubber is an urban, industrial medium, and much of the rubber Booker uses comes from old tires, which, scarred and worn, betray suggestions of their histories prior to being re-purposed as art.  For Booker, this wear and tear is a metaphor for physical and emotional scarring resultant from one’s class, race, or occupation.  She also views the tire as a symbol for social mobility; not only does its very shape imply movement, but, particularly in America, cars are an especially visible expression of social and economic status.

Photo credit: City of Chicago

 

Here in Millennium Park, in the absence of any sort of curatorial statement (or even corresponding titles) viewers must approach these sculptures on their own terms.  Somehow, Booker takes industrial found material and manages to achieve something akin to what Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth did in highly-polished bronze, wood, or marble; these sinuous, organic forms accent their surrounding environments, the negative spaces within her sculptures unobtrusively and gracefully framing the world that surrounds them.

By design, her work invites interaction: children crawl through their crevices, viewers pose inside them, and nearly everyone that walks by touches them.  Take-Out, a sort of monumental picture-frame, seems to have been created with Instagram in mind; it’s exceptionally popular among passers-by, who pose for snapshots and selfies, framed by its floppy tendrils.  And curious viewers frequently reach out to settle in their minds whether the feathery membrane of Gridlock is indeed rubber.  Booker welcomes such interactions.

Photo credit: City of Chicago

 

Chakaia Booker isn’t too concerned about how viewers interpret her work, although some of her sculptures indeed have very specific sources (Pass the Buck, for example, was inspired by Madam C. J. Walker, a prominent African-American millionaire, philanthropist, and social activist), preferring instead for viewers to come up with their own associations.  These could range from the sordid history of the rubber industry to nostalgic childhood memories of tire-swings and playgrounds.

Any art in the Boeing gallery space faces the formidable task of competing with iconic works like Jaume Plensa’s immensely popular Crown Fountain and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (very possibly the most Instagrammed public sculpture in the Midwest), both just a stone’s throw away.  But, visually appealing and eminently accessible, Booker’s sculptures certainly hold their own, their rough-hewn, patchwork surfaces contributing an element of handicraft missing from the park’s other sculptures.  Furthermore, while Chakaia Booker’s art is comfortably at home in relatively hushed, sacrosanct spaces of New York’s Metropolitan Art Museum, her work also admirable delivers an elegant beauty to the masses in the vernacular, industrial, working-class medium of recycled rubber, situated here in this shady oasis just a few steps away from the bustle and traffic of Chicago’s perennially high-decibel Michigan Avenue.

By Jonathan Rinck

John Yeon State Natural Area, photo courtesy Portland Art Museum

I’ve always been fascinated by architecture, as it is both a large scale form of sculpture, and a form of three-dimensional art that is mostly inaccessible to artists that can easily work in other mediums. But even among architects, there are those that take their work to a scale even larger, and begin to shape the landscape, as well as the interior spaces that humans like to inhabit.

Representing architectural work in a gallery is always a challenge, but thankfully the show Quest for Beauty: The Architecture, Landscapes, and Collections of John Yeon at the Portland Art Museum was replete with images and models, giving a sense of the architect’s work over the course of his career.

John Yeon shaped a good part of Oregon’s history, informing the aesthetics of architecture that is now considered classic to the Northwest. And he went even further than that, shaping the very terrain of Oregon itself, underneath his buildings.

The Shire, photo courtesy Portland Art Museum

 

Yeon’s father built the Columbia River Highway, a route of glorious vistas along the Columbia River Gorge that still stands out as a scenic byway above the more direct I-84 freeway along the river’s edge, below it. One of John Yeon’s first projects was the Neahkahnie Mountain Highway, one of the last stretches of US 101 to be completed along the Oregon Coast. The road required harsh bites to be excavated out of the mountainside, and large retaining walls were constructed to keep the road surface from tumbling down the steep incline into the Pacific Ocean. While a road might be thought of as merely infrastructural, without the artistry of architecture, it nevertheless leaves a visible mark across the environment. These sorts of marks would be central to Yeon’s work.

Shaw House, photo courtesy Portland Art Museum

 

Many of his houses were situated on Oregon’s natural vistas, either cliffsides or hilltops. Although his design for the WPA Timberline Lodge hotel were not selected, his image of a building growing as an outgrowth or crown upon a prominent Mt. Hood ridgeline were characteristic. His 1950 Lawrence and Anne Kishner Shaw House was the first work of what would called his “palace style.” With sweeping verandas and large open windows and doors looking out on the environment, these buildings weren’t just fit for royalty— they also made the surrounding environment sovereign, as if adding a jewel-encrusted headdress onto the top of nature’s pre-existing majesty.

Yeon’s success in architecture allowed him to move on to the landscape directly. “The Shire” was the architect’s name for a mile-long stretch of the the Washington shoreline of the Columbia River, directly across from the awe-inspiring Multnomah Falls on the Oregon side. Yeon saved this land from development, and shaped it according to the English landscape style of the picturesque. With the dramatic backdrop of the waterfall across the river, Yeon created a landscape painting in three dimensions.

Neahkahnie Mountain Highway, photo courtesy Wikimedia

 

Perhaps his most breathtaking legacy is the John Yeon State Natural Area, a stretch of coastline south of Ecola State Park along the Oregon Coast. Another parcel that he purchased to save from development, this land now forms the foreground of a stunning view of the Pacific basalt monoliths from Ecola Point all the way south to Haystack Rock. In this case, Yeon did not shape the land, instead simply allowing the Pacific Ocean to continue the same work it has been doing for millenia. In juxtaposition with Yeon’s other magnificent work, the visitor to the retrospective is forced to ask a difficult question: what if the most beautiful thing an architect could do to the land, is nothing at all?

By Adam Rothstein

Heaven, Wind (title) Boat-shaped flower basket (description), 2014. 66 x 17.5 x 34.5 cm.

The Gate, a floor-to-ceiling curviling tiger bamboo structure by Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, rises up at The Met, its woven, brown-flecked flaxen limbs both hugging the floor and flying into the heavens.  It’s unlike any of the other ninety works on view at The Met. The flowing entrance spires signal a new era for bamboo design, craft, and sculpture. For one, this bamboo has been recycled ten times and was, for example, in a different configuration of rising braided arms at the Museé Guimet in Paris.  

The Gate, 2017. Photo by Jan Garden Castro.

 

Second, the construction consists solely of bamboo pieces (moistened with water though water is not part of the work). Third, tiger bamboo is especially durable and comes from Kōchi prefecture, a rural mountain area in Japan. Most importantly, Chikuunsai IV is carrying forward his love of craft and his family’s tradition as, at the same time, he gives new directions to bamboo art.

Distinct from some artists who use hay, straw, twigs, or bamboo to create sculpture, Chikuunsai and his two able apprentices, Tomo Uesugi and Emika Nakamura, create masterful shapes that combine Eastern and Western traditions. In the Western arena, one thinks of nature mort paintings and sculptors as diverse as Ursula von Rydingsvard, Maya Lin, and Martin Puryear. The Gate is Chikuunsai’s abstract visceral sculpture that conjures nature and human nature, past and present at once. In an Eastern direction, the weave is simple yet complex; the shape is figurative and abstract, spiritual and earthy. Its immediacy and fluidity are additional striking features. This is a departure from other works in the exhibition, which are smaller and all in glass enclosures. It invites light as it turns the entrance into an intimate adventure.

Close-up portion of Creation, 2015, 35 x 35 x 63.5 cm.

 

A long display in one gallery contains pieces from the entire Chikuunsai clan, starting with the master of the eldest, Wada Waichisai I (1851-1901), then Tanabe Chikuunsai I, who began as an apprentice in 1890 around age 13. Chikuunsai II (1910-2000) occasionally added the shafts of old bamboo arrows to his baskets. Tanabe III (1940-2014) used arrow bamboo, timber bamboo, rattan and lacquer for his Delight for the Future abstract sculpture with circles inside squares; it received a prize in 2009. Tanabe Chikuunsai  IV (b. 1973) has a boat-shaped flower basket titled Setting Sail in this display. All of the works at The Met are from the Diane and Arthur Abbey collection.

Chikuunsai IV told me, “Technique and skill and spirit are important. My parents taught me that this spirit is more important than technique. Using bamboo, I try to keep the spirit and tradition in my heart as I create new work.” For his piece at The Met, he first considered the context and space and then created a drawing. The artist is adept at working with twenty kinds of bamboo, including: madake (giant bamboo),  torachiku (tiger bamboo),  kurochiku (black bamboo),  susudake (smoked bamboo), and kikkō-chiku (“tortoise shell bamboo”).

Two important upcoming shows are hundreds of works at Takashimaya, a high end department store in Tokyo, at the end of June, and a small and large installation at the Pierre Marie Giraud Gallery in Belgium this fall.

The artist, based in the Sakai district of Osaka, Japan, earned a sculpture degree from Tokyo University of the Arts. Publications of his work include one book from the Museé Guimet and Chikuunsai IV, published in April 2017 by his studio (www.chikuunsai.com).  The book illustrates this young master’s work using a range of shapes and bamboo types. Flowing Pattern, 2016 combines dark and light-hued bamboo and vertical and diagonal and horizontal directions; the weaving also makes spaces for light between the lattices. Ray of Light, 2014 has a more open weave and complex curving knots up the handle. Shooting Star, 2013 has light entering in a burst halfway up the bottom of this striking composition. Innocent, 2017 uses thicker pieces of bamboo, and its bamboo handle curves upward in an expressive way. The Creative City series, 2017 departs from basket styles to interpret architectural structures. Finally, the book contains some of the iterations of the tiger bamboo – installations that soar in multiple directions at once, that rise, braid together, and bend in rooms circled by windows: natural light enters and shines through the weave.

Shooting Star, 2014, 26.5 x 26.5 x 34 cm.

 

http://players.brightcove.net/911432378001/Sys8aolzg_default/index.html?videoId=5491433244001

By Jan Garden Castro

Umbel Series, by Jenni Ward. Photo by Bill Bishoff, courtesy of UCSC Arboretum.

Nature is inspiration to many artists. But while natural form has inspired generations of artists, today many are finding source material not purely within the plants and animals, the leaves and seeds, flowers and rocks that we think of immediately when we consider the definition of “nature.” More and more commonly, artists are drawn to the juxtaposition between the natural world and the human world.

Where the Forest and the Sea meet, by Larry Worley. Photo by Bill Bishoff, courtesy of UCSC Arboretum.

 

Amid nature on display at the UCSC Arboretum in Santa Cruz, are scattered works of art. The current installation of the Art in the Arboretum program is entitled Site Specific Environmental Installations, curated by Susana Arias, and features the work of ten local artists. Many works stand out starkly in the natural environment, and yet they mimic it. In creating sculpture from a combination of natural-appearing and unnatural-appearing materials, in producing both abstract forms and representational ones, and in placing their work within the unique landscape textures of a maintained and yet living environment, these artists leap back and forth across the gap between naturalness and its opposite. As the works emerge from the arboretum around them, one can see human artistry, that activity that we use to negotiate the difference.

And Sow It Begins, by Lucia Bruer. Photo by Bill Bishoff, courtesy of UCSC Arboretum.

 

The work is discovered as one walks through the arboretum, which perhaps in itself feels a natural way to encounter it. Weaving through a field of grasses, the visitor can walk alongside Jenni Ward’s Umbel Series, a series of ceramic pieces mounted on steel rods. Along a fence line, which might otherwise be a stark interruption in a walk, one finds an even more noticeable interruption: Jamie Abbott, Barbara Downs, and Roy Holmberg’s 3 + 7, a massive rendition of a eucalyptus seed pod rendered in steel and burlap. Found lodged in a tree is Larry Worley’s Where the Forest and Sea Meet, made from woven fiber and wood. As if directing the viewer, Lucia Bruer’s And Sow It Begins appears partially like farm apparatus, and partially like its own form of randomized growth, as wood extends towards the sun from a set of metal thorns. And then impossible to miss is Wendy Domster’s Sequoia Semprotea, which arranges fallen redwood limbs in a reconstruction of a Protea bloom, taking the viewer inside of its gaping arms.

Sequoia Semprotea, by Wendy Domster. Photo by Bill Bishoff, courtesy of UCSC Arboretum.

 

There is no material that is truly unnatural— the only thing that changes is the amount of human work that goes into bringing it into its new form. And the works in Environmental Installations reminds us of not only of this fact, but that humans have a choice in how far to work the natural world through our activities. Our presence can never be removed from the natural world, but we have the ability to tread lightly, and plan our interventions wisely, letting them fit into the natural world as seamlessly as possible.

By Adam Rothstein

Da-Dings-Da ist im Groß-Da da weil der Wurm im Moby Dick wohnt, 2014, Video, 25 Min.,
© John Bock, Courtesy Sprüth Magers

I first encountered the work of German artist John Bock in August 2010 at the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin. [1] As the name suggests, the gallery was a temporary initiative that ran for two years (September 2008 through August 2010), situated in the centre of the city next to Museum Island.   For their last show Bock had been commissioned to curate a mammoth exhibition featuring the work of 65 artists, all combined into an immersive installation across multiple levels. The promotional poster for the exhibition (which I still have a copy of safely rolled up in my closet) is probably a good indication of what the audience encountered when they set foot in the gallery – and to some extent, is perhaps indicative of the kind of imagery that Bock has become synonymous with.

Cowwidinok, 2013, Video, 82:30 Min.,
© John Bock, Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Foto: David Schultz

 

Bock’s work is inherently sculptural, and the pieces his creates display a mesmerising approach to notions of multidisciplinary practice. It’s brash, theatrical, ostensibly surreal and awash with a unique and often mystifying symbolism. That said, the core of his work actually resides in his approach to performance, and often includes nods to a more conventional and recognisable school of work. For his new exhibition entitled ‘In the Moloch of the Presence of Being,’ Bock has incorporated some previously existing works into another hugely intricate landscape at Berlinische Galerie, one of the capital’s foremost contemporary art spaces. Moving between Bock’s work with film, a medium which he has increasingly utilised since 2004’s Meechfieber (his first feature length piece), and his sculptural practice, the exhibition is in many ways a demonstration of a kind of middle ground that the artist has occupied between different modes throughout the course of his career.

As you walk through the room, the space feels deliberately crowded. Because of the variety of materials Bock uses and the often strange assemblages he creates, the initial impression of the work can be one of bemused bafflement (at one point, my companion turned to me and said nonchalantly ‘watch out for the toast sculptures,’ gesturing at a line of burnt pieces of toast laid out on the floor). What becomes clear is that the exhibition is installed in such a way as to juxtapose the film works projected on the walls with the sets which are installed next to them. The result is that the show contains pockets of work which act as place holders for his performances, the traces of which exist in the details of their construction.

Große Erscheinung der ins Licht getretenen TRIEBKREATUR, 2014, (Ein Vortrag von John Bock mit Kazuma Glen Motomura),
© John Bock, Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Foto: Timo Ohler

 

Closer inspection also reveals that the almost claustrophobic nature of the exhibition directly reflects the spaces Bock creates for his films and performances. Escape (2013) takes place in the front seat of a car, cut away to enable filming (and indeed the film itself breaks the fourth wall at multiple points pulling out to reveal a green screen and camera operators), while Suggestion (2012) takes place in a tiny cell-like space walled off with what looks like hypnotic spinning circles. One of the first works in the show is from a ‘collaborative lecture’ with Kazuma Glen Motomura entitled Große Erscheinung der ins Licht getretenen TRIEBKREATUR, (2014); it’s filmed inside what looks like an old fairground kiosk, albeit one with some fairly dystopian renovations evident within the interior. Elsewhere in the exhibition cages or cage-like structures abound, strange spaces of activity and perhaps even captivity that feel unsettling and comical in equal measure.

Attached to this notion of ‘play’ within Bock’s performance work are muted suggestions of hierarchy. This is perhaps most noticeable in the last work in the exhibition, Dünnhäutiger Butcher (2016), which closely resembles a classroom environment and features materials like an architecture model, chess set, photocopies of chess prodigy Bobby Fischer, pickled gherkins in socks, screws, cement, feathers and peas amongst other things. While the work could be seen as a nod to Bock’s history as a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, it’s a dynamic that is also found in many of his other works. Indeed Bock describes his performances as ‘lectures’ in a way which both suggests the symmetry of a classroom or educational setting while simultaneously subverting it through the histrionic or otherwise demented characters which take the pulpit in many of his works.

Escape, 2013, Video, 7:30 Min.,
© John Bock, Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Anton Kern Gallery / Gió Marconi Gallery / Regen, Projects / Sadie Coles HQ, Foto: David Schultz

 

In a short trailer for the exhibition, Bock discusses some of the ideas which inspire his artistic practice. [2] Seated in the car set from the film Escape, he describes the notion of ‘summenmutation,’ (or ‘total mutation’); the result of a feeling of interdependence between the objects, the actors and the films that he makes. For Bock then, the art he creates resides in a middle point between the object, the action (performed by himself or other collaborators) and the audience. The importance of the performance element of his practice rellies on activating the inanimate objects that comprise his sculptural works and film sets, which then becomes central to appreciating his work as a whole.

Suggestion, 2012, Video, 16:40 Min.,
© John Bock, Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Foto: Raphael Beinder

 

As part of the exhibition, Berlinische Galerie is hosting a screening of Bock’s latest film Hell’s Bells, elements of which are also on display within the exhibition including the poster. The film is ostensibly within the realm of the classic Western, however Bock’s particular take on the genre is evident in some of the sculptural artefacts associated with it. The film was also the subject of a recent exhibition at Sadie Coles in London,[3] which screened the film alongside a selection of sculptural elements from the film. [4] As at the Berlinische Galerie, the intricacy of Bock’s sculptural work was matched by the theatricality and occasionally unhinged totality of the artist’s film.

John Bock, ‘In the Moloch of the Presence of Being’ is on show at Berlinische Galerie until August 21st.

By Will Gresson

[1] http://www.kunsthalle-berlin.com/en/exhibitions/John-Bock

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9429SOe57cU&feature=youtu.be

[3] John Bock, ‘Hell’s Bells: A Western’ ran from March 1- April 13, 2017 at Sadie Coles, London http://www.sadiecoles.com/exhibitions-press-release/john-bock-hell-s-bells-a-western

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcvVDJ4ZA-o

Installation view, Nested Trasmuter Cycle, by MSHR. Courtesy of Interstitial.

I often feel that time is an unspoken quality of sculptural work. Of course, time is inescapable, and so any sculpture that we view must occur over time. The time we spend looking at the work, the time it takes to walk around the sculpture to see it from all angles, the time to sculpt it, which is inscribed in its surface and structure. Time does not stop affecting a work of sculpture, either. Eventually, any material crumbles to dust. Every solid substance is secretly in motion, whether changing form, decomposing away, or slowly moving through space, even as it adheres to the surface of our spinning planet.

Installation view, Nested Trasmuter Cycle, by MSHR. Courtesy of Interstitial.

 

Artistic collaboration MSHR’s installation Nested Transmuter Cycle, now at the Interstitial Theatre in Seattle, contains even more diverse kinds of motion. Not quite a kinetic work, MSHR’s assemblages are heavily wired with sound and light. Using sensors that detect this sound and light, the electronics act in various feedback loops, creating pulsing, echoing, strobing, spasming sound and lightscapes through the installation space, which then illuminate and vibrate cut panels of translucent material. One might call it electro-kinetic.

Installation view, Nested Trasmuter Cycle, by MSHR. Courtesy of Interstitial.

 

MSHR is known not only for doing installations, but performances as well. One might classify their work as time-based art, or noise music/art, as easily as sculpture. But for me, MSHR’s work is most powerful in the way that it shapes the space. Unlike even the most dissonant noise performances, where the focus is on the shaping of the sound itself, the pulsing feedback cadences of MSHR’s work affect my gut more than my ears, and my irises more than my optic nerves. Like a boulder heaved into a small pond, the waves of sound emanate outwards, enveloping the viewer’s entire body. It is not hyperbole to say that the effect can be time-distorting, because as one moves around in the space, surrounded by the sines of air pressure and photons, one can easily lose track of exactly where and when the sound and light begins, and where it ends. Looped back over itself in twisted loops, the entire experience of the room is woven into itself. Optical illusions hang around the walls of the installation, and spatial illusion writhes between those walls. And then, if that wasn’t enough, virtual reality adds another layer.

Installation view, Nested Trasmuter Cycle, by MSHR. Courtesy of Interstitial.

 

Whether the experience is pleasant to the observer, will likely be a matter of personal preference. But for myself, I find MSHR’s work to be overpowering, in the best sense of the word. In the blank space of a gallery, they fill the experiential dimensions completely, in a way that few pieces of sculpture can do.

By Adam Rothstein

A World View: John Latham; Time Base Roller, 1972, Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017) Image © Luke Hayes

John Latham is generally considered to be a pioneering voice in British conceptual art. Born in what was Livingston, Northern Rhodesia (now Maramba, Zambia), he later studied in London at Regent Street Polytechnic and then Chelsea College of Art and Design. Over the last couple of years, his work has cropped up in several significant international exhibitions both in the UK and abroad, including the Conceptual Art in Britain 1964–1979 at Tate Britain during the middle of last year. In recognition of both his own innovative body of work, and also his vast influence on later generations of artists, the Serpentine galleries are now showing two concurrent exhibitions dedicated to Latham in Hyde Park, London.  

In the main Serpentine gallery, A World View serves as a focussed retrospective, collecting pieces from across Latham’s multifaceted practice including sculpture, installation, painting, assemblage and moving image. While that may sound like a vast array of works, what is surprising as you walk around the exhibition is how much room each element has, even within the relatively unassuming rooms of the space. On entering, the first thing you encounter is a series of incredible short films playing in sequence. Highlights from this selection include Talk Mr Bard (1961) and Speak (1962), which are proto-psychedelic stop-frame animations, complete with grainy analogue soundtracks (Speak was famously screened by the band Pink Floyd at an early show). As circles of bright colour fly out of the screen at the viewer, strange acousmatic sounds crackle underneath.

A World View: John Latham; Speak, 1962, Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017) Image © Luke Hayes

 

These films, along with four others which appear in an adjacent room were originally shot on 16mm film, and their presence here sets the scene for Latham’s other works in a way which feels invaluable. Some of the oldest works here (including those which predate these film pieces), can feel startlingly contemporary, undoubtedly a testament to the longevity of Latham’s relevance. With their inclusion however, the exhibition gains a particular temporal/aesthetic tone which helps convey just how ground breaking much of this work was when it was first created.

A World View: John Latham; even tstructu re, 1966-67; Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017); Image © Luke Haye

 

In tandem with the films, the sculptural and assemblage pieces are the clear standouts from the exhibition as a whole. Just to the right of the entrance sits even tstructur re (1966-67), a sheet of hardboard with papers, cards and text across it like a kind of three dimensional project board. A close analysis of a dot of black ink on five sheets of paper, the work hints at a kind of conceptual underpinning which is highlighted in the accompanying exhibition text, but which can occasionally get lost simply by the visual strength of many of these pieces.

Latham was interested in the way we think about the passage of time, and in particular the way ‘events’ work within that spectrum, something which is perhaps most clearly examined in his One Second Drawing works or his Painting with tennis ball marks (1990). It is also explicitly analysed in even tstructur re where the appearance and disappearance of this blob of ink is examined and documented in notes. He viewed time as a kind of non-linear system, which expanded beyond individual disciplines or structures. Objects in the exhibition then, could be read as traces of events within this expanded conception of time.

A World View: John Latham; The Story of the RIO, 1983; Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017); Image © Luke Hayes

 

Books feature prominently in the other assemblage works like the panels in The Story of the RIO (1983) or the frankly stunning Untitled (1958), a beautiful mesh of media distorted and protruding from the body of a dark canvas. These pieces recall some of Anselm Kiefer’s work, but they also tie Latham’s practice to that of contemporaries like Gustav Metzger, with whom the artist collaborated in the ‘Destruction in Art Symposium’ in 1966. These familiar yet deconstructed objects are transformed in an almost counter-intuitive way, and the longer you spend with some of these works the more you begin to discern in the mangled mesh of detritus.

On the opposite side of the gallery, books also appear in a collection of numbered sculptures entitled The N-U Niddrie Heart. Composed of glass, books, paper and plaster, as well as electrical components, the works are all connected by a line of sculpted sand running along the floor. Originally the series included 36 structures, present here at Serpentine are numbers 10, 11, 17, 23, 24, and 36. They’re supported by Derelict Land Art: Five Sisters (1976) and Niddrie Woman (1976), two works which immediately recall some kind of high school science project display (while also explicitly speaking to Latham’s interest in Land Art). Like the even tstructu re they incorporate different media as a kind of research study, featuring photography and glass jars with shale inside. Latham actually wanted to get the mines that these works document preserved as monuments – a permanent alteration of landscape preserved and approached as art because it involved a collective effort from hundreds of people over long periods of time.

A World View: John Latham; The N-U Niddrie Heart, no. 10, 11, 17, 36, 24, 23, 1991; Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017); Image © Luke Hayes

 

John Latham’s legacy is explored further at the Serpentine Sackler gallery through a small group show named for the artist’s famous film work Speak. Featuring Tania Bruguera, Douglas Gordon, Laure Prouvost and Cally Spooner, each presents work which demonstrates the extent to which Latham’s often radical thinking continues to resonate today.

Bruguera’s work with the Immigrant Movement International (IMI) and Arte Útil (‘useful art’) speak to the role of the artist as a political figure and activist This is also explored in her work with the Institute of Activism Hannah Arendt (INSTAR), where activists work with people from different facets of Cuban society to educate and engage with building a more democratic society. It’s a very real and practical application of Latham’s notion of the potential for art and artists to facilitate wider social change.

Douglas Gordon contributes work which incorporates texts from some of Latham’s writing, as well as a video piece featuring fragments of conversation between Latham, Gordon and powerhouse curator (and Serpentine Artistic Director) Hans Ulrich Obrist dating from 1999. The exhibition also includes two sculptural works in the form of The Latham (Variations), two games (modelled on ping pong and a pool table) which viewers can actually play to experiment with notions of the event in space and time.

Speak: Douglas Gordon; Installation view, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017); Image © Mike Din

 

Laure Prouvost’s installation is easily the standout work in Speak; a collection of beautiful sculptural works utilising glass and light. Some recall the objects Latham used to create his incredible assemblages, familiar domestic items or moments transformed into something more, like a glass egg in a frying pan or a bottle of what looks like detergent. Lights above the darkened room highlight different elements while a soundtrack narrates the scene with an appropriately disconnected slant. Prouvost worked as Latham’s assistant in the early 2000s and her work reveals both his influence and her own unique artistic language.

Speak: Laure Prouvost, end her Is story, 2017; Installation view, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (1 March 2017 – 21 May 2017); Image © Mike Din

 

Cally Spooner’s works are also a wonderful development of some of Latham’s notions of time and the event. Her pieces here also speak directly to a performative element that is largely implicit elsewhere in both galleries. On the left side of the Sackler gallery, a single performer runs through a series of exercises and stretches in a kind of perpetual preparation to exert. Around the entire space lines drawn in different materials reflect a collage of data on the artist’s career and metabolism, as well as the economy. Here the event is reflected in both object and gesture, and in this respect her work serves as perhaps the most contemporary expression of Latham’s ideas.

A series of related screenings, performances and talks round out the Serpentine’s diverse program of events in conjunction with the exhibitions. A World View: John Latham and Speak: Tania Bruguera, Douglas Gordon, Laure Prouvost, Cally Spooner are on show until May 21, 2017 at the Serpentine Gallery and Serpentine Sackler Gallery respectively.

By Will Gresson

Jeff Sonhouse, Meeting at the Crossroads, 2003. Oil and mixed media on canvas. Photography courtesy UICA, images captured by Pizzuti Collection

If the exhibition Us is Them at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids seems at times to have an excessively broad focus, I can happily forgive this on the grounds that it had so much to offer.    This is a muscular show that assembles a diverse international ensemble of artists whose work, broadly speaking, addresses social justice and current affairs. 

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2010, Mixed media. Photography courtesy UICA, images captured by Pizzuti Collection

 

Occasioned by the UICA’s 40th anniversary,  Us is Them brings together work by 42 artists from America, the Caribbean, China, and the Middle East, and addresses issues such as race, poverty, immigration, and colonialism— issues which certainly transcend geographical boarders.  Some of the artists are early or mid-career, but the show also certainly has its share of established names.  There’s work by Kehinde Wiley, who famously inserts contemporary black figures in paintings from the European cannon (here, his Wild Man derives from a Hans Holbein of the same name).  There’s a Soundsuit by Nick Cave, whose wearable sculptural ensembles have appeared in Vogue photospreads.  There are even several drawings and a film by Kara Walker.

Many works in the show address the commodification of culture.  A garish robe, for example,  fabricated out of cheap-looking clear polyvinyl chloride (pvc) and which has the appearance of being mass-produced hangs suspended at eye-level.  Sinuous dragons are embroidered into it with fishing line, and the robe is vaguely reminiscent of court attire from the Qing Dynasty.  Artist Wang Jin calls his series of pvc robes “high-tech rubbish,” and they humorously comment on the cheapening and trivializing effect of consumerism and industrialization on culture.

Kehinde Wiley, Design for a Stained Glass Window with Wild Man, 2006, Oil on canvas in gilded frame. Photography courtesy UICA, images captured by Pizzuti Collection

 

Also addressing commodification, ceramic artist Simone Leigh creates anthropomorphic, head-sized cowrie shells;  they seem menacing and sinister, their ridges having the appearance of jaws.  The cowrie shell was used in some African and Asian cultures as a form of currency and were thus once a form of commodity exchange.  Leigh’s cowrie shells speak obliquely to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in which the African body itself was commoditized.

Most of the works in Us is Them are two dimensional, although there’s frequently ambiguity between genres, as in Jeff Sonhouse’s painting Meeting at the Crossroads, portraying two men, their afros comprised of hundreds of matchsticks that have been ignited, literally making this an “inflammatory” work.  And Afro-Cuban artist Roberto Diago obliquely addresses poverty in his Rauchenberg-like assemblages of found objects, creating art out of the urban detritus from the street.   They may technically be considered paintings, but they’re visceral and textured.

Jeff Sonhouse, Meeting at the Crossroads, 2003. Oil and mixed media on canvas. Photography courtesy UICA, images captured by Pizzuti Collection

 

Some emotionally-laden works in the exhibition possess the sticking power to remain in one’s mind days afterword.  A cycle of ambitiously large photographs by Israeli photographer Adi Nes movingly addresses immigration, poverty, and homelessness in his contemporary reimaginings of biblical stories; his images evocatively depict the destitute and dispossessed.  And addressing China’s former one-child policy is a haunting painting by Tianbing Li, whose Portrait of a Boy is a photographic, black and white portrayal of an anonymous child.  Tianbing’s body of work poignantly addresses the fact that there exists in China an entire generation for whom the notion of a brother or sister is only an abstract concept.

The multi-story exhibition spaces of the UICA are formidably large and, on occasion, can sometimes make good exhibitions feel sparse, but this certainly isn’t the case with Us is Them which manages to snugly fill the space.  In addressing so many issues (and with work from so many countries), the show’s focus is admittedly broad.  But It’s quite unfair to fault an exhibition for having so much on view; after all, who’s ever complained about too much food at the buffet?  And the show certainly offers food for thought.  In fact, through May 14, the $5 ticket for Us is Them is the best bargain in Grand Rapids.

More information on the exhibition can be found on the UICA’s website.  The Pizzuti Collection (which loaned all the works in the show) has an excellent website with biographical information and images of all the artists and works on view in Us is Them.

By Jonathan Rinck

MAIIAM Exterior. Courtesy MAIIAM.

MAIIAM is a beautiful private museum of contemporary art in Chiang Mai, Thailand started by Jean Michel Beurdeley and his late wife Patsri Bunnag, together with their son Eric Bunnag Booth. The name of the museum, a play on words meaning “brand new” in Thai, is a combination of the word “new” and a tribute to Mr. Booth’s great grand aunt Jao Jom Iam, a royal consort to King Rama V, who lived in a time when Thailand moved decisively into modernity. Opening MAIIAM in July of 2016, the family wished to share their private collection with the Thai public in order to show how art can enrich lives and provide new perspectives. Providing a definitively international contemporary art destination in Northern Thailand as well as strengthening the already flourishing Chiang Mai art scene, MAIIAM offers the public permanent access to important collections of both Thai and regional contemporary art.

MAIIAM Permanent collection. Courtesy MAIIAM.

 

With both permanent and temporary exhibitions from both local and international artists as well as performances, film screenings, education programs, workshops, and lectures, the programming aims to engage a variety of audiences. The museum’s permanent collection, chosen based on both emotional resonance and formal correspondences, includes work from the late Montien Boonma, Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Chatchai Puipia, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Navin Rawanchaikul, Natee Utarit, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Udomsak Krisanamis, Pinaree Sanpitak, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, and emerging artists of the region. The permanent collection is a veritable treasure trove of the masters of Thai contemporary art, an incredible education in itself and a must-see for anyone interested in the progression of contemporary Southeast Asian art.

Apichatpong Weerasethaku. Courtesy MAIIAM.

 

The building itself, designed by the Bangkok-based architecture and design studio all(zone), is an impressive and memorable structure in its humble context. The façade, covered in thousands of small mirrors, mimic a decorative technique found in traditional Thai temples. The combination of convention and innovation as well as the capacity of these mirrors to constantly respond to their ever-shifting surroundings is the perfect metaphor for Thai contemporary art; the astute ability to mirror, process, and internalize our quickly changing world.

For more information, please visit www.MAIIAM.com

By Gracelee Lawrence

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), Digital Study for Saint Ursula and the Virgin Martyrs, 2014. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Anthony van Dyck’s Seventeenth Century Portrait of Charles I at the Hunt now hangs reverentially in the Louvre, so it’s easy to overlook the artist’s daring decision to paint an equestrian portrait of the monarch dismounted and dressed in civilian clothing as he makes almost mischievous eye contact with the viewer; to its original audience, this was emphatically contemporary art.  Multimedia artist Kehinde Wiley helps us look at these Old Masters in a new light.  His subjects strike poses straight from Old Master paintings, but wear camouflage and Timberland boots.  Furthermore, he playfully flips the switch on art, giving us a color-inverted pantheon of Who’s Who in art history. 

Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic now travels to Toledo Art Museum where, through May 14, viewers can see 60 paintings, sculptures, and stained-glass works representing the past 14 years of the artist’s career (a short time, given the scale and scope of the show).

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps. Oil on canvas, 2005. 108 x 108 in. (274.3 x 274.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Partial gift of Suzi and Andrew Booke Cohen in memory of Ilene R. Booke and in honor of Arnold L. Lehman, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo: Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum)

 

Wiley famously takes iconic works from Western art and re-imagines them with black and African-American subjects.  The sources of his confrontationally large paintings are often immediately recognizable.  At the exhibition’s entrance is his imposing Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps, though in his version, an anonymous black man (his subjects are frequently street-cast) in fashionable camouflage attire has taken Napoleon’s place.

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), Digital Study for Saint Ursula and the Virgin Martyrs, 2014. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

 

While he’s known mostly for his paintings, Wiley also works in sculpture and stained-glass.  His bronzes recall Baroque-era portrait sculptures.  In Houdon Paul-Louis, Wiley re-interprets Jean-Antoine Houdon’s portrait bust of the well-connected Enlightenment socialite Anne-Germaine Larrivée, but instead of white marble, Wiley uses a dark, luminous bronze.  The unzipped jacket on Wiley’s sitter subtly echoes the plunging neckline of Larrivée’s dress.  Wiley sometimes adds other layers of meaning by addressing social issues like colonialism and the exploitation of cheap labor.  His Cameroon Study is a bronze bust of a man with an athletic shoe on his head (he’s literally underfoot).

A visual highlight of the exhibition (quite literally) is an octagonal room, reminiscent of a chapel, housing a set of backlit stained-glass windows from his series Heroes, Saints, and Martyrs.  His use of stained glass evocatively recalls the windows of a cathedral, in which we frequently see martyrs portrayed.

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), Houdon Paul-Louis. Bronze with polished stone base, 2011. 34 x 26 x 19 in. (86.4 x 66 x 48.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Frank L. Babbott Fund and A. Augustus Healy Fund, 2012.51. (Photo: Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum)

On occasion, I’ll find myself trying to like an exhibition largely out of a sense of obligation; the message could be excellent, but the art itself might be second-rate.  Upon entering A New Republic, my unfounded worries the show might not live up to the hype vanished instantly.  Kehinde Wiley works masterfully across a wide array of media, and his work certainly resonates as it speaks to the lack of diversity we see in the western cannon.  In a revealing moment as I stood in front of one of his paintings, two elderly black women stood beside me just within earshot.  After a few moments of lingering contemplation, one very quietly uttered, perhaps to her friend, though quite possibly just to herself, “My God…we are beautiful.”

Additional information and images can be found on the website of the Toledo Art Museum.

By Jonathan Rinck

Gallery view, Courtesy of the Cooley Gallery, photo by Evan LaLonde.

The multimedia show Iconoclastic at Reed College’s Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery is about objects… and all that entails. The small space contains only a few objects, but it is not the objects themselves, but the gaps, which are significant.

Take, for example, Maya Lin’s Little Cone, which is 10,000 pounds of crushed recycled auto glass, piled in a corner. As the largest and heaviest work in the gallery, it casts an imposing presence, glittering like some sort of post-Twentieth Century urban snow drift, appearing synthetic, almost drug-like in its neat, sculpted pile. But the pile itself is not the full extent of the work— in the gallery guide, there are photos of the installation, which required multiple pallets, workers in protective gloves and masks, and a number of tools to create. The work is not just about the finished installation itself, but much about how it came to be. Where does such an amount of broken glass come from? Where is it going? What is this quantity, compared to all the broken glass that we produce every day, or every year?

Little Cone by Maya Lin. Courtesy of the Cooley Gallery and the artist, photo by Evan LaLonde.

 

These sorts of questions bridge the gap between our idea of the object or artwork, and the object itself. This is a crucial question in our current culture that overlaps onto virtual spaces, and Morenshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke’s The 3D Additivist Cookbook is invoked to launch us directly into this strange chasm. The book is actually a massive set of computer files available online, containing recipes, templates, and criticism for exploring the newly widespread ability of fabricating objects using 3D printing technologies. In the show at the Cooley Gallery, the Cookbook is only mentioned— but, an object from the Cookbook called Untitled (Octopus) is on view. Crafted from the depth-reducing plastic material common to 3D printers, the piece is almost translucent underneath the bright gallery lights. One is left to wonder, does it even exist at all? Is the real piece of art the 3D file, or the copy that was produced for the show?

Trafalgar Square, London by Ryan Woodring. Courtesy of Cooley Gallery and the artist, image from the work.

 

Ryan Woodring’s video loops “(…) the oldest new structure in the history of this city,” Trafalgar Square, London (and also the similar City Hall Park, New York version) push this idea even further. The videos depict the unveiling of recreations of the Monumental Arch of Palmyra, destroyed by ISIS in 2016, but recreated by The Institute for Digital Archaeology using 3D printing tech in 2017. Or, the videos did depict this. Painstakingly, Woodring has erased the images of the recreations from the videos, causing the sheet to be whisked away to reveal— nothing at all.

Untitled (Octopus) by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke. Courtesy of Cooley Gallery and the artists, photo by Evan LaLonde.

 

The problem with problematizing objects in a gallery show is that the work must be so conceptual, as to extend completely beyond the gallery space. It requires words, outside images, different times and places, dimensions of data, and ideas. In a sense it may violate the boundaries of sculpture, but in another sense, its sculptural space exists in the mind as well as in the gallery. There are only these differing senses in sculpture. There are only such objects, which both exist and do not exist, which have been both destroyed and rebuilt, which have been both imaged and erased. Iconoclastic begins in its own small space, but as the visitor departs the gallery, they take these ideas with them, out into the rest of the world.

By Adam Rothstein

Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016.. Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.

Photographer Richard Mosse is perhaps best known for his expansive multimedia work ‘The Enclave.’ Using now-discontinued military surveillance film, Mosse travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo and captured scenes of the brutal civil conflict in the region. The film rendered the footage in bright pinks and magentas, creating disorienting and dreamlike landscapes, populated by heavily armed guerrillas roaming the hills.  In collaboration with cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost, Mosse then created an immersive installation for the Irish Pavilion at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2013. He later won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014 for the same work (which was also shown in an expanded form by The Vinyl Factory at their Brewer Street Car Park in Soho, Central London that same year).

For his new installation, ominously entitled ‘Incoming,’ Mosse has returned in some ways to the methodology which has been so fruitful and ultimately successful for him. Installed inside The Curve, the unique space built into the centre of the Barbican in London, the artist’s project is a timely and incendiary piece of political commentary that negotiates the current refugee crisis engulfing the Middle East and Europe, while simultaneously building on the artist’s previous work with mitigated gaze and perspective.

Incoming, Installation View. Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost Photo by Tristan Fewings / Getty images

 

When entering the exhibition space, you encounter a grid of screens which all shuffle along in rows, first to the right and then back to the left. Combined they show a single disjointed picture, but the movement creates the sensation of someone searching through multiple shots to find a particular view. In the accompanying press text, Mosse’s equipment is described as a ‘powerful telephoto military camera that can detect the human body from a distance of more than 30km and accurately identify an individual from 6.3km, day or night.’ That feels telling here because the way the screens move suggests someone looking for a target, searching through reconnaissance images purposefully to find, perhaps, ‘enemy combatants.’ At this point the title of the installation as a whole weighs heavy on the mind; the cry ‘Incoming!’ registering almost like a soldier’s warning as they see an opposing army approaching.

As the landscape finally gives way to something more recognisable, we see what looks like a refugee camp, complete with fences and tents. The film used has a dehumanising effect, something which becomes more and more obvious as the viewer progresses through the exhibition. The figures look like an exercise in 3D modelling or graphic design, or maybe proofs for a computer game, but in reality they show what has been called the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.  Mosse’s presentation increasingly blurs the reality of their situation, while simultaneously documenting it.

Incoming, Installation View. Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Photo by Tristan Fewings / Getty images

 

Two digital prints follow the multiple screen installation, both of which heighten this sense of shifting perspective. In one, a refugee camp sprawls out across a harbour next to a massive truck stop. The scene is almost certainly the Port of Calais in France, where during the referendum on British membership of the European Union, the right-wing press in the United Kingdom reported daily attempts by refugees to board trucks and sneak into the country. What’s striking is the sense of the everyday, possibly even the mundane, which permeates the image. In the top half, refugees play football, while in the bottom trucks go about running goods between the European continent and the UK. Between the greyscale imagery and the long range perspective of the shot, none of it seems as real or as shocking as we intuitively know that it should.

This is especially emphasised by the second work, which shows rows of tents and makeshift shelters inside what appears to be a sports stadium; two things immediately stand out. The first is that the way the setting is depicted, makes it appear more like a graphite drawing then a photograph. Again the way the image is made feels like it obfuscates what is being portrayed, creating even more distance between the viewer and the frankly unimaginable difficulties they are witnessing. The second is that setting really brings the strange and complicated role of the ‘audience’ into focus as well. The stands surrounding the refugee camp are all empty, and the spectacle we are seeing is not entertainment. Two teams playing football might play to a full house, but who is really paying attention to this crisis? The empty seats are a pointed accusation of apathy and questionable priorities.

Incoming, Installation View. Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Photo by Tristan Fewings / Getty images

 

The final film work which shares its title with that of the exhibition as a whole is a stark and difficult watch, spaced across three large screens at the end of the gallery space. Sometimes one or two screens will drop out, leaving only a single point of focus. The photographic techniques Mosse employs throughout the show are much more visible here, with less of the jerky movement of the first piece or the limitations of the static works. We see the strangely rendered figures quietly checking their valuables underneath the pillows of their bunk beds. We see children playing football and getting into a shoving match before finally being pulled apart by adults. We see young children riding their bikes or slowly skipping through the giant door of what looks like an aeroplane hangar in which they are housed.

Where Mosse’s attempts at symbolism arguably come up against their biggest hurdles are in some of the quieter moments of this film work. The young boy riding in slow motion on his bike for example, only heightens the sense that the whole thing is really just a strange animation rather than a documentary. I found myself in two minds in particular over a series of images which show refugees collecting Christian symbols together to protect them from fire. Immediately afterwards the left and right panels drop out and we see a single Muslim man washing his face and praying to Mecca in amidst the chaos. Granted with the outright offensive language used by both the press and politicians (‘horde,’ ‘swarm,’ et al.) to describe the threat of a Muslim invasion of Europe from the Middle East, one can more than appreciate what appear to be Mosse’s attempts to subvert that narrative, but there is something here that feels heavy handed in ways which detract rather than support his overall project. From a purely aesthetic point of view, all of the images shown are powerful and confusing in equal measure, the dehumanised figures at once reflecting and chastising their portrayal in much of the world’s media networks.

Still frame from Incoming, 2015–2016. Three screen video installation by Richard Mosse in collaboration with Trevor Tweeten and Ben Frost. Co-commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Barbican Art Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.

 

The work is presented in press materials as a single cohesive installation work comprised of four components, but it’s the gallery space itself which really cements the notion that this more than merely an exhibition of photography. The Curve is exactly what you would imagine it would be from the title, a singular space which arcs around, leaving the audience at most points perpetually ‘in-between’ the work. Considering the subject matter being examined here, that state of being within something where there is no fixed or obvious beginning or end feels laden with significance. As I encountered the final film work, I found myself recalling the detail of the refugee camp from the first block of screens; the trail of people which curled around a fence, seemingly waiting to eat at a makeshift canteen. That sense of being shepherded without a clear idea of destination not only clashes pointedly with the combative connotations of the exhibition’s title, but also helps demarcate the installation as a larger immersive experience that extends beyond any single static or moving image work.

There’s sense contradictory duality that in many ways defines ‘Incoming,’ and a pervasive sense of unresolved tension; this can feel as disconcerting for the viewer as it is accurate for the subject matter. In an era that is increasingly coming to be defined by peoples’ willingness to embrace easy and reductive answers, perhaps that’s the most significant point Mosse makes here. Like it or not, this is all much more complicated than its presentation has thus far indicated, and one way or another we’re going to need to have a much longer conversation in order really address this crisis. Exactly how much longer we will continue to procrastinate having said conversation, sadly remains to be seen.

By Will Gresson

Remains (detail), 2015. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei studio.

“How does he manage to do it?” One wonders.  It’s not just that Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei can work with media as varied as cast iron, steel rebar, porcelain, wood, or Legos, but that somehow the finished works are beautifully crafted and always embedded with carefully considered layers of meaning.  The exhibition Natural State at Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park brings an impressive cross-section of his recent work to the heart of America’s Midwest, and amply demonstrates Ai’s uncanny knack for seamlessly integrating craftsmanship with concept. 

Free Speech Puzzle, 2014. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio.

 

Within the park’s suite of traditional exhibition galleries are variations some of the artist’s most iconic works.  Here we’ll find the imposingly large black-and-white photographic triptych of Ai irreverently dropping an actual Han dynasty urn, for example.  But step in close and the seemingly crisp photographic images reveal themselves to be illusory; they’re actually comprised of thousands of greyscale Legos.  Strategically positioned in front of the triptych is an ensemble of original Han Dynasty urns dipped in shiny, metallic auto paint.  The deliberately tacky result is the visual equivalent of nails screeching across a chalkboard.  But as conceptual art, the ensemble certainly works; by appropriating the color palettes of Mercedes and BMW, the urns subtly speak to global consumer culture.

Outside the principal gallery spaces, the hallways are lined with display cases holding smaller works.  These feature crafted porcelain, such as a puzzle-map of China hand-painted in the style of the imperial Qing Dynasty.  The notion of China as a conglomerate of separate parts is a motif that frequently seems to occur in his art (his Iron Tree in the garden’s permanent collection is a unit comprised of 99 visually disparate castings of elements from different trees).

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 2015. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio.

 

These porcelain works range from the beautiful to the macabre.  One case contains convincingly realistic trompe-l’œil  fragments of what appear to be human bones, making a disturbing reference to the harsh realities of the “re-education” camps in which Ai (the son of famous poet who landed on the wrong side of the China’s Cultural Revolution) spent much of his childhood.

A series of kites adds a sense of levity and playful whimsy to an otherwise politically-driven show, and hang suspended from the ceiling.  These are better described as sculptures in the round.  Skillfully hand-crafted with bamboo and silk, these kites represent creatures from an ancient Chinese mythological text (look for the six-legged Dijiang, known, appropriately enough, as being an agile dancer).

This line of kites leads viewers to the park’s suite of greenhouses, where Ai’s sculptures enjoy ample breathing room amid Victorian, arid, and tropical gardens.  Here, locating his art becomes a bit like a game of hide-and-seek.  Most of his garden works are comparatively small abstract porcelain forms, but a monumental urn flaunts the versatility of the medium.

Han Dynasty Vases with Auto Paint. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio.

 

Even in the tranquil space of the greenhouses, Ai’s work still manages to deliver resonant political commentary.  A large slab of Tofu (actually porcelain) is an oblique reference to the shoddy “tofu construction” of the schools that collapsed in the 2008 earthquake that shook Sichuan province.  Much of Ai’s activism has focused on calling awareness to the government’s culpability in allowing the schools to be built so poorly.  It’s a tragedy Ai also directly references in an ensemble of gnarled, twisted rebar, somewhat incongruously located in the park’s Victorian greenhouse.

Having seen Ai Weiwei’s sprawling show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014, it was nice to encounter his work again, but this time in the smaller, more intimate setting of Meijer Gardens.  Both exhibitions solidified my admiration for his work.  His content is meaningful, provocative, and beautifully crafted.  Even the wooden display cases that hold his porcelain works are themselves works of art, each assembled using a traditional Chinese furniture-making technique that doesn’t use screws or nails.  And the 81 days Ai spent in a Chinese prison in 2011 (and the years of house-arrest that followed thereafter) certainly lends an undeniable authenticity to both his art and activism.

Porcelain Rebar, 2015. Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio.

 

Andy Warhol, one of Ai Weiwei’s artistic heroes famously said that everyone is bound to get fifteen minutes of fame.    Ai is certainly riding the crest of his.  And as I ambled through the park’s greenhouses, I couldn’t help but wonder if his body of work will stand the test of time.  I’m likely too new to the world of art criticism to accurately make such predictions, and I’m certainly too much of a fan of the artist to be objective, in any case.  But I’d like to think, at least, that it probably will.

Natural State runs through August 20 at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

By Jonathan Rinck

Three Shades, by Rodin. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

I tend to prefer abstract sculpture— however, even in more representative work, there is plenty of abstractness to find and appreciate. Take the Rodin exhibition currently at the Portland Art Museum. Subtitled “The Human Experience,” the exhibition certainly showcases the representational aspects of Auguste Rodin’s masterful bronze works. The 52 bronzes in the show are almost entirely of human forms, and are curated so that the viewer learns about the process by which the sculptor produced the works both in detail and at scale. In re-using aspects of previous works, Rodin allowed particular characteristics of the human form to span across his oeuvre, and the viewer can immediately sense these pieces of humanity— hands, torsos, heads, limbs— extending throughout the gallery, like memories or ghosts of the many models that the artist employed to create these testaments to the human form.

Jean D’Aire, Monumental Head, by Rodin. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

 

But there are also many abstract qualities hiding within these bronzes. In Rodin’s expression of these bodies, there are the bits that are missing, smoothed over, allowed to flow into each other without interruption, creating a jarring sense of the uncanny. There is a point where the human form meets up with the monstrous.

For example, the hollowed out eyes of many of Rodin’s historical figures. Like the Burghers of Calais, citizens who volunteered to surrender themselves to save their city during the Hundred Years’ War. Within the darkness of the bronze, their missing eyes form a haunting shadow, absorbent of light, a hole within the larger-than-life sculptures. Or, consider the missing faces— as in the sculpture of Aphrodite, or the three Faunesses. That most human quality of the expressive face is removed, and we only have the body, seized in a stasis, frozen in the midst of motion, a split second that both denies the individuality of the human body being represented, and also sets it apart from that cognizing glimpse, when we look into the face of another person and recognize someone like ourselves.

The Three Faunesses, by Rodin. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

 

Or there are the missing arms, stretched invisible above the contorted body of Narcisse. Or the extra material, the stone block and water jug of the two caryatids, structural pieces that by displacing the head of the sculpture become their own crowns of the body, cast in the deathless life of bronze. The material, of course, unites all the sculptures in their lack of humanity. Bronze might be described as a warm metal, almost organic in hue. But at the same time, it absorbs light even as it reflects, creating an inverse dynamic in which the edges are blinding and the centers are dark. Cast from this molten alloy, far too heavy to be real people regardless of size, the bronze works are significant in how different they are from flesh. Ultimately, they are always stand-ins, cast replicas of what we find so fascinating about our own bodies.

Caryatids, by Rodin. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

 

And this is what I believe that Rodin depicts about humanity— our capacity for the monstrous. In each of these works, there is writ large the denial of humanity, the frontier across which we cease to be human beings, and become objects, raw material, mere things that can be owned, sold, melted down and destroyed. In Rodin’s time, like our own, what is reflected in the bronze is human monstrousness— but make no mistake, this itself is only a reflection. If there is anything monstrous to be found in the human body, it originates in us, and by depicting it in his work, Rodin only works to show us as we are, have always been, and will be.

By Adam Rothstein

Robert Rauschenberg Installation View. Photograph courtesy Tate Photography
© Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York

The first time I saw the film Casablanca, I must have been about twenty years old. I was sitting in my grimy student flat watching it on an old computer with my friend, when they turned to me part way through and said something strange. The film was incredible, they acknowledged, but the dialogue was making them cringe. Casablanca of course is now, and probably forever will be, famous for its incredible wealth of iconic lines. From Rick’s sad lament about ‘all the gin joints in town’ to perhaps the zenith of the picture’s dialogue as he and Ilsa say goodbye at the airport, it is responsible for some of the most memorable exchanges and suave one-liners of any film in history. But in reality, my friend wasn’t really commenting on the dialogue in Casablanca as much as the subsequent dialogue around the film. So much of it has become fodder for parody, imitation or even just general praise that even its most ground breaking moments have become over-worn clichés for many, making it hard to encounter the original film without a lot of distracting baggage. It begs the question, how does one say something interesting, original or relevant about work which has long been established as part of the canon?

Robert Rauschenberg Monogram (1955-59) Photograph courtesy Tate Photography Moderna Museet. Stockholm. Purchase 1965 with contribution from The Friends of Moderna Museet. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York

 

Robert Rauschenberg is the quintessential ‘Iconic American Artist.’ His career, which spanned almost seven decades, traversed the spectrum of medium and method, and he has long resided as a prominent reference point in the history books of twentieth century American (and by extension Western) art. For a large museum such as Tate Modern in London to present an exhibition of his work that bills itself as the first full-scale retrospective since his death in 2008, a cynical viewer might think that the odds are very much against the curators being able to avoid the obvious pitfalls of re-treading the artist’s long established mythology. Exhibitions such as these in particular are almost always organised chronologically at Tate, frequently trading the opportunity to explore darker corners of the artist’s practice in favour of a more accessible narrative approach.

Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Spread) 1983 Photograph courtesy Tate Photography © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York

 

In the case of Rauschenberg, one immediate impression this raises is just how many significant American art figures the artist crossed paths with during the early stages of his career, both personally and professionally. By the time you enter the third room of the exhibition, the accompanying texts have already name-checked Susan Weil, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, as well as Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers. These diverse influences, from his time at Black Mountain to his travels in Southern Europe and Northern Africa, are reflected in the different materials and working approaches which Rauschenberg explored throughout his life.

Some of the most exciting examples of this are the Combines, ostensibly paintings but augmented with objects and found elements to create incredible three dimensional collages. Arguably the most famous of these is Monogram 1955-59, a sculptural work which incorporates a stuffed Angora goat framed by a rubber tire amongst a host of other esoteric materials. Aside from being some of the most interesting pieces in the exhibition, they also act as a gateway into Rauschenberg’s work with Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This involved working with sets and costumes with increasingly levels of artistic confidence and freedom, leading to ever more complex physical works that existed as both sculptural pieces and performance props.

Arguably it’s the work which Rauschenberg began to make in the mid-1960s (after controversially winning the prize for painting at the 32nd Venice Biennale in 1964) which accounts for the exhibition’s most fascinating section. After leaving Merce Cummingham Dance Company in 1964, Rauschenberg co-founded the Judson Dance Theatre. Here he actively started to create his own performance work, culminating in 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering in collaboration with Billy Klüver in 1966. Featuring 30 Bell Lab engineers working with a host of artists, the success of the piece led to the creation of ‘Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) to further explore the melding of science and the arts. The selection of works documents the early years of E.A.T collectively suggest not only an open and exploratory approach to concepts of medium and collaboration, but also improvisation and development.

Robert Rauschenberg Gold Standard 1964 Photograph courtesy Tate Photography © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York

 

These are further illustrated by Mud Muse 1968-71, one of the strongest sculptural works in the whole exhibition, and a synergetic meeting of Rauschenberg’s attitudes to both material and technology. The work features a metal tank containing roughly 1000 gallons of bentonite clay mixed with water, which bubbles and coughs in response to the sound generated by the bubbling. At play here is both the technical element of the work’s construction, as well as a refreshingly subtle but acute incorporation of sound as a medium. The work is also noted in the accompanying text as addressing the concerns of the era, in terms of both the formless nature and industrial attributes of the objects themselves.

Of the final rooms, one of the most interesting sections of work relates to the ‘Rauschenberg Overseas Cultural Interchange,’ or ROCI, which took place from 1984-1990. During this period, the artist travelled to a number of countries viewed at the time as having repressive or closed off systems in an effort to posit art as a communicative social and political tool; works from Mexico, China, East Germany, Cuba and the Soviet Union are on display, though the selection of countries is not exhaustive. The artist’s collaboration with choreographer Trisha Brown on Glacial Decoy from 1979 is also a major highlight. Here his sculptural approach to set design incorporated photographic projections that slowly changed as the performers moved across the stage. The work was later revisited in 1985 when Rauschenberg went to China as part of the ROCI.

Robert Rauschenberg Mud Muse (1968-71) Photograph courtesy Tate Photography © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York

 

In his final years, Rauschenberg returned to the kind of photographic collage elements which could be found in his earlier work with silkscreen printing from the 1960s. In these later pieces, the pieces are tinged with an almost nostalgic hue, as the increasingly frail artist (he suffered two strokes towards the end of his life) looked back over his life and work. Walking through this collection of later pieces, I had a fleeting sense that there was less of the energy that made much of the rest of the exhibition feel new, in spite of how familiar so much of the work is. In fairness however, that may well have been a distorted appraisal that unfortunately mirrors my friend’s reaction to the dialogue in Casablanca. When viewed in the context of his career, the works reflect not only Rauschenberg’s continued interest in technological developments (in this case digital printing and image storing), but also a keen awareness of what his practice meant in a wider sense. While perhaps visually colder in their largely digital essence, they undoubtedly round off the curator’s intended narrative of relentless development and experimentation.

Is the retrospective overly reverent? Certainly, though it’s difficult not to walk through these galleries and understand just why the artist is so prominently featured in the Western canon. As with many previous large scale artist retrospectives, that kind of justification may well be considered a successful end in itself. Brief moments of cynicism aside, there is no question here that the artist’s work was both ground breaking and highly influential, and to have access to so much of it in one space is a rare and rewarding opportunity.

By Will Gresson

Installation view of ‘Françoise Grossen Selects’, 2016. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

The more I think about fiber arts, the more enamored I become with it as a form of sculpture. Visiting the Françoise Grossen Selects show at the Museum of Art and Design put this motion into overdrive, as I explored the variety of things that might be done using solely rope.

We might tend to think of fiber arts as a more traditional art form— and rightly so, as it is a technique that has been practiced for thousands of years. But weaving took center stage in some of the world’s first industrial transformations. And today, high-tech robots weave carbon fiber into solid forms for applications as diverse as the automotive and aerospace industries. Weaving may be an ancient technique, but the process of designing series of knots continues to form a structural component of the human-created world.

Installation view of ‘Françoise Grossen Selects’, 2016. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

 

Françoise Grossen tends to use natural fibers in her work, and the texture and colors in the show reflect that— shades of browns and earthy greens, forming twisted, sinuous sisal and hemp pathways. This acts to show off the traditional, handcrafted form. But it also contrasts nicely when she chooses to utilize other material, like fire hose or metal wire. It also contrasts nicely with Margaret and Christine Wertheim’s Crochet Coral Reef a couple floors up in the Museum, which is a series of sculptures woven to draw attention to plastic trash impeding upon ocean environments. But we also shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that natural fiber rope is somehow “home spun.” On the contrary, rope was a key technology for much of human history, as it enabled worldwide trade through shipping. Even today, our globalized production pathways rely upon massive container ships, which still must be tied to the dock during loading and unloading, using ropes little different than those used to establish trade in the Mediterranean in Roman times, or to first circumnavigate the globe.

Installation view of ‘Françoise Grossen Selects’, 2016. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

 

Grossen’s sculptures also bear this timeless message. They look like wall hangings, but they also look like insects, like computer networks, like the human form folded in prayer or meditation. The complicated series of whorls and loops appear like the archaic symbols of alien coats-of-arms, perhaps signifying allegiances and relationships of power that we could never fully understand. And they do— because that is our world of technology today. Tied together through a myriad barely-visible fibers, our world is one of spider webs, but with that apposite strength concealed within its microscopic tendrils.

I wonder about the time and precision necessary to assemble not just our global networks, but Grossen’s sculptural works. Two knots can be similar and yet never identical, tied at two near-exact lengths in a piece of rope. To balance these works, to make the fibers fold precisely where the artist wants, to remove the slack and let tension reign across the work without use of loom or frame— it is not simply ingenuity or skill, but wisdom that guides the artist’s hand. It is this sort of wisdom that we need now, it order to weave our world better, tighter, and more beautiful.

By Adam Rothstein

Copyright Irina Korina taken from ‘Destined to be Happy’ installation shot, GRAD 2016.

Destined to Be Happy is a new site-specific installation by Russian artist Irina Korina that deliberately forgoes a specific narrative or reading in favour of a host of dynamic and evolving associations. Entering the gallery through a side alley, the viewer moves through a dark tunnel which then opens out into a kind of maze, framed by curved corrugated steel panels and burnt out trees. Silver confetti is scattered across the wooden floor of the space while industrial plastic, occasionally bowed under by pockets of water, frames the ceiling. The walls are also draped in plastic, giving the space the strange aura of a construction site, perhaps a half finished retail space. The most visually striking element of the exhibition is the six large figures assembled atop the protruding legs of mannequin dummies, identified in the exhibition text as The Globe, The Tear Drop, The Fire, The Heart, The Rainbow and The Meteorite. A soundscape composed by Sergey Kasich adds an ominously shifting sonic palette to the installation, where elements slowly merge into one another, thereby blurring the line between fragments of identifiable found sound and digital abstractions.

Copyright Irina Korina taken from ‘Destined to be Happy’ installation shot, GRAD 2016.

 

You could be forgiven for reading that and already feeling slightly bemused. Beyond the immediate experience of the installation itself, there is little in the way of a guide or direction. The text which accompanies the work is slightly removed from the show itself, situated on a wall outside of the maze construction near the front desk of the gallery. This effectively means the viewer is forced to encounter the show cold (assuming they have not done their research online before entering), sparking their own interpretive initiative and disrupting their sense of orientation. Indeed, this open approach to the construction of narrative and meaning is one of the things which makes Korina’s work her so provocative, and ultimately rewarding. The viewer is first and foremost adrift in a strange forest of signs, and must take a reading according to their own tools of cognitive navigation and imagination before any other paths are opened up to them.

Copyright Irina Korina taken from ‘Destined to be Happy’ installation shot, GRAD 2016.

 

The six figures, identified as ‘mascot-like characters’ provide perhaps the strongest challenge and greatest multiplicity in this regard. All of them feature a cartoon-like face, evoking memories of everything from childhood entertainment to corporate logos. Their shapes revel in idealistic imagery (a heart, a rainbow, even a wizened old man’s face on a globe) while the legs poking out beneath them make them look like bodies, victims perhaps of whatever phenomenon is responsible for the burnt out tree branches and pooled water puddles above. It’s an incongruous combination, the smiling faces running counter to what feels like a space exuding foreboding tension and possibly trauma. Kasich’s soundtrack is instrumental in heightening the anxiety of the installation, and it’s perhaps this juxtaposition which really helps draw out what feels significant about the way the work is constructed.

Each component of the exhibition, from the arrangement and design of the space itself to the specific nuances of the mascot figures demonstrates a formalism which owes a great deal to Korina’s previous studies and work with set design. The characters are crafted from materials like upholstery foam, wire, glue and fabrics; physical and tactile elements which presently feel like old-fashioned materials in a post-digital age. There is also a fragility and ephemerality to these methods that mirrors the fractured and unstable psychological tone of the space as a whole. It’s a timely nod to notions of precariousness with none of the soap box politics or handwringing which so often accompanies these discussions. As one colleague put it during our visit, to see something which deals with these topics without lamenting the artist’s position within that precarious state feels uniquely refreshing.

Copyright Irina Korina taken from ‘Destined to be Happy’ installation shot, GRAD 2016.

 

The fact that these notions can come out of not only the work itself but also the finer technical points of its assembly adds another layer to the openness with which the artist has presented the work, and correspondingly the diversity of responses it might elicit. The blackened trees can evoke the black forests of Russia’s landscape as much as it can discussions of climate change and biodiversity. The mascots speak to elemental environmental concepts such as earth, air and fire, as much as they do marketing theory and branding. While all of these meanings are simultaneously in flux, at the very moment the viewer encounters them they are suspended in these in-between states, a comment on how we are always perpetually becoming, transitioning, evolving, and ultimately decaying. Destined to Be Happy as a title feels sardonic as much as it does questioning, and the smiling faces peering up from the ground where they lie otherwise lifeless feels unsettling and laced with existential angst. The title itself is a reference to Sergey Miroshnichenko’s documentary of the same name, a kind of Russian iteration of the famous Up series made in the United Kingdom which follows a group of people born in the former Soviet Union as they progress through life. It touches on notions of entitlement, expectation, and the promise of a particular kind of social trajectory which is increasingly coming under heavy scrutiny.

The installation’s cornerstones are the ubiquitous conversations of the times we live in, and as the show opened in the final month of 2016, it’s difficult not see it as a commentary on what was for many a strange and terrifying year. With that said the exhibition is an exploration and presentation of research that goes beyond the current space in which we live in to something much deeper and more intrinsic to the experience of being human. Ultimately it’s this depth of interrogation which makes Korina’s work here so compelling to consider.

By Will Gresson

Installation view, Witness, MCA Chicago. July 2, 2016 – February 19, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

I’m increasingly realizing that most art can only be experienced in person; the expansive and visceral terrain of a Jackson Pollock canvass, for example, its paint in places measuring nearly a half-inch thick, is entirely lost in translation when transposed into a deadened image in a book (and I can forgive someone for finding Pollock underwhelming if they only ever encounter him in diminutive digital or print reproductions).  At Chicago’s Contemporary Museum of Art is a strong pair of exhibitions which emphatically make the point that art is, at its essence, experiential.  Together, they demand viewer interaction and emotional response.

The intimate show Above, Before, and After explores the interactive relationship between art and viewer.  It presents a mixed-media ensemble of art that moves, dangles, and projects into the viewer’s space.  A set of dynamic mobiles by Alexander Calder does this most explicitly; much more subtle is minimalist John McCraken’s Untitled. It‘s a painted green plank, more sculpture than painting, which invades our space as it leans against the wall.  Its paint is layered and polished so finely that it seems mechanically produced.  It initially comes across as distant and impersonal (as much minimalist art does), yet its reflective surface manages to place viewers directly into the work.

Installation view, Witness, MCA Chicago. July 2, 2016 – February 19, 2017. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

 

Similarly, Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar’s Cries and Whispers also leans against the wall, interrupting viewer space.  His elongated light-boxes consist of mostly negative space except for the faces of undocumented immigrant workers asymmetrically pushed to the outer edge of the frame.  It’s subtle commentary on those that live in the margins of society, yet inhabit our space nevertheless.

John McCracken, Untitled, 1967. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Ileana Sonnabend. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

 

The concurrent exhibition Witness explores the relationship between the photograph, the photographer, and the viewer.  The photos on view are gleaned from the MCA’s permanent collection, ranging from Walker Evans’ candid snapshots of subway passengers to the large and confrontational works of Cindy Sherman, who always manages to make the viewer feel voyeuristic.

The emotional and visual culmination of Witness is a major installation by Alfredo Jaar.  His unnerving Sound of Silence is a rectilinear architectural space (its exterior lined with blinding fluorescent lights) that serves as a small theatre which loops an 8 minute text and photo montage which relays the painful story behind the famous image of an emaciated Sudanese girl collapsed in the dirt as a vulture looks on with anticipation.  The Pulitzer-winning photo, The Vulture and the Little Girl, was taken by Kevin Carter, a South-African photojournalist.  When the image was published in the New York Times in 1993, it proved highly controversial, generating an overwhelming public response (much of it negative).  Carter took his own life the following year.

Alfredo Jaar, Cries and Whispers, 1988. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Howard and Donna Stone. © 1988 Alfredo Jaar. Courtesy of Galerie LeLong, New York. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

 

For his Sound of Silence, Jaar’s decision to confine viewers in a claustrophobic space was a good one.  We’re forced to confront this image and its history at an uncomfortably close range, and, like the afterimage of a flash-bulb, the emotional weight of the story lingers even after the film ends.

Although these are separate exhibitions, they pair well together, offering art that reaches out to the viewer both physically and emotionally.  They’re an excellent antidote to the notion that contemporary art is too esoteric to have anything to say beyond the specialized world of art critics and academics.

As an art history instructor, I inevitably spend much of my day showing Powerpoint slides to students, acting as a sort of mediator between student and image.  But I admit to my students that this is quite possibly the worst way to encounter art. It’s only when we physically stand in front of a good work of art that art has the opportunity to stir us emotionally, and these works at the MCA do precisely that.

Above, Before, and After runs through April 16, and Witness runs through February 12.

By Jonathan Rinck

Installation photos of APEX: Dawn Cerny, copyright Dawn Cerny, photos courtesy Portland Art Museum

I’m walking amongst a display of furniture— in a way. But these are not actual pieces of furniture. Their names often reference furniture: side table, biblelot cart, gray wardrobe, orange chair. But they do not appear to be useable pieces of furniture. They lean to the side, tower precariously, their uneven surfaces coming to drastic angles, not the usual orthogonal angles we are accustomed to from our household furnishings.

And then there is the colors. Bright, luminescent colors, shining through their matte surfaces, over the layers of fiberglass and resins. They are colors of a homewares rainbow, brilliant in the room, but as lacking of substance as the refraction of sunlight through an afternoon rainstorm.

Installation photos of APEX: Dawn Cerny, copyright Dawn Cerny, photos courtesy Portland Art Museum

 

The colors are the most noticeable feature of the work in Dawn Cerny’s exhibition of work in the Portland Art Museum’s APEX contemporary gallery. But after getting past the color, the viewer is confronted with an unsettling series of sculptures. Are they meant to be furniture? Are they meant to not be furniture?

Installation photos of APEX: Dawn Cerny, copyright Dawn Cerny, photos courtesy Portland Art Museum

 

The names create that uncertainty, as much as the sculptures themselves. They occasionally reference furniture, but they also reference people, places, and times. The names more set up a contrast to furniture. One title specifically references Ikea, and that seems like a most apt basis for contrast. These pieces are everything that Ikea is not. Ikea presents an image of “niceness,” the look of a home in which a majority of society might want to live. Ikea forms this image from a composite of furniture pieces, which you can buy individually, or in sets. But although many people own Ikea furniture, few homes with Ikea furniture end up looking like the image. One or several pieces of well-designed, clean looking, light toned furniture does not make an Ikea display catalog. Cerny’s work throws that lack of fulfillment into stark relief. Her sculptures do not have clean lines, subtle colors, or functional cleverness. However, they may be far more clever than Ikea’s patented flat-pack assembly. These pieces are unexpected, jarring, forcing the viewer to deal with them as individual pieces, not asking them to be submerged in a catalog aesthetic. Surprises wait for the observer of Cerny’s work— tricks of balance, small resting places in which coins, hair elastics, and other pocket litter have been stashed. Many of the works are on casters, presenting furnishings that are not meant to become part of the home, but instead, look as if they might begin to escape at any moment, if the floor becomes anything less than perfectly flat. Normally ignored aspects of homes are accentuated, such as in Cerny’s number of stylized duct vents, hanging up above the normal line of sight, and yet still joining in alliance with the larger works taking up the floor of the gallery. The path through the gallery is obstructed, forcing you to deal with the work, unlike furniture, normally pushed back against the walls.

Installation photos of APEX: Dawn Cerny, copyright Dawn Cerny, photos courtesy Portland Art Museum

 

In contrast to the simulacra of the Ikea catalog image, in which the furniture appears as if it is almost a part of that full, marketed image, Cerny’s work is more mutant, schizoid, escaping any attempt at complying with what society feels might be desireable. I’m reminded of a certain philosopher’s metaphor of a table, slowly changed, little by little— an extra leg, a hole in the flat surface, the object cut apart, rotated, and rejoined— until the point arrives at which we can say that this is no longer a table at all. Cerny’s pieces are departing the realm of furniture as well, but never having been there to begin with, we cannot really know where they are going. Less of a departure, and not an arrival either, these sculptures seem to be transiting tangentially, passing through the realm of the familiar, the comfortable, the material from which we construct our homes… and heading onward, into an even greater unknown than that from which they came.

By Adam Rothstein

The Edlis/Neeson collection carries some weight; in one room alone, you’ll find yourself in the company of three Jeff Koons sculptures and a Damien Hirst.  Other artists include Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Robert Rouchenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman, and Gerard Richter.  There’s even an entire room of Warhol miscellany.

Andy Warhol. Big Electric Chair, 1967-68. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Edlis/Neeson Collection. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

 

There’s not really a coherent theme among the varied works, though most lie firmly in the category of Pop art, reflective of Edlis and Neeson’s personal interests.  The founder of Chicago’s Apollo Plastics Corporation, Stefan Edlis initially only collected art made of plastic, certainly a postwar medium.  The collection has since broadened to include Pop art more generally.

Jeff Koons. Bourgeois Bust – Jeff and Ilona, 1991. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Edlis/Neeson Collection. © Jeff Koons

 

For all its emphatic modernity, the collection engages in a sort of dialogue with art history.  Two works by Jeff Koons, who ironically and self-conscientiously creates sculptures smacking of bad taste, directly reference art history.  His Christ and the Lamb derives from a Leonardo drawing of the same name, but Koons transforms the tender drawing into a gaudy mirror with an obnoxiously sprawling frame—it’s like Baroque gone berserk.   And his Bourgeoisie Bust is a very kitschy spin on the traditional portrait bust.

The Edlis/Neeson collection was always intended to be accessible, and it is.  But below the glossy surface of some of these works lies an understated social commentary.  Charles Ray’s subtly malevolent sculpture of a boy disconcertingly smiles at us while gesticulating with his right hand as if elucidating a point…or is he gesturing the shape of a pistol?  His proportions are that of a youth, but he stands at six feet tall and wears clothing reminiscent of the Hitler Youth.  It’s sinister and menacing, much like Hirst’s Still, a display case of surgical tools which could just as plausibly be instruments of torture.

Charles Ray. Boy, 1992. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Edlis/Neeson Collection. © Charles Ray

 

But it’s Andy Warhol who delivers the most poignant sociopolitical commentary.  His Little Race Riot is a lithograph of a photo taken by Charles Moore of police using dogs to disperse a crowd of civil rights marchers in Birmingham.  Warhol’s repetitive use of imagery, be it of celebrity faces, electric chairs, or automobile accidents, famously comments on our inability to be emotionally moved to empathy when we’re bombarded so incessantly with images of violence on the news.  It’s a problem certainly exasperated further with the advent of social media.

Pop generally seems to have a pejorative connotation.  The words pop music and pop culture, for me at least, tend to evoke the banal and the trite—in short, anything that sells, regardless of how insipid or shallow.  But this half-billion dollar addition to the Institute’s collection suggests that postwar Pop art can actually be surprisingly relevant, at least when it wants to be.  And though some of this work is half a century old, it nevertheless seems current—in the case of Warhol especially, perhaps more now than ever.

The Edlis/Neeson collection is on view as part of the ongoing exhibition The New Contemporary.

Jonathan Rinck

Institute For Figuring’s Crochet Coral Reef project, 2005–ongoing. Photo courtesy of the Institute For Figuring

Margaret and Christine Wertheim’s coral reef crocheted project has been shown all over the world, but the current exhibition of their work and that of their many worldwide collaborators at Museum of Art and Design’s Crochet Coral Reef: Toxic Seas show is one of the best that I’ve seen.

The basic concept is fairly self-explanatory. In order to draw attention to the declining health of worldwide coral reefs due to human-originating causes, the Wertheims’ crocheted sculptures of coral reefs have been shown in many venues since 2002, often alongside the work of other collaborators, either solicited by the Wertheims or contributed by the general public. The colorful works of twisted, handcrafted fiber are fun, participatory, and educational as well, a friendly introduction to a serious subject.

Installation view of ‘Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS’, 2016 Photo by Jenna Bascom. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

 

In this incarnation, the work is highly detailed. Crocheted structures of fragile magnetic tape and fine wire join those made with more common yarn. Plastic “sand” washed up from the Pacific plastic gyre backdrops many of the pieces, adding a layer of physical evidence to the much-storied “floating plastic island” that captivates the anthropocene media. The scale of the work is intensified. Massive pieces, each named for female figures of divinity from a variety of cultures, take center stage in the gallery, emphasizing the way in which small fragments of plastic, manufactured, discarded, and leached into our waterways add up into a global crisis of geologic proportions.

Installation view of ‘Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS’, 2016 Photo by Jenna Bascom. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

 

We can never see the true scale of the devastation, of course. There is no way to visualize the combined effects of the hydrocarbon flotsam that we have inflicted upon our earth’s sheltering ecosystems. We cannot see the microscopic organisms that are being slaughtered by the billions, leaving the coral reaches bleached, a haunted skeletal indicator of the diversity consigned to the bottom of the sea. We cannot perceive the systemic suicide that we have committed over the last century, as we have developed a global culture founded on the exploitation of former biomass through conversion into plastic, and the fundamentally transitory nature of that plastic as it passes through our hands in sometimes mere seconds, before needing a new resting place somewhere within the bowels of the planet’s chemical exchange networks.

To even consider this fate we have created for ourselves, we need to envision new geometries. We need to render visible not only the resources at hand and the waste created, but those networks extending outward into a future extending thousands of years. That length of time is longer than that of written human history, and we have no model for extrapolating that into the future. But it is the visualization of new geometries at which the Wertheims excel. Their research vehicle, the Institute for Figuring, experiments with hands-on models for representing mathematics, and their first explorations into crocheting was for the purpose of visualizing hyperbolic space. Hyperbolic space incorporates folds, and creates a maximum of surface area. It just so happens that crocheting allows one to easily form hyperbolic shapes, which in turn are similar to those found in nature, such as in lettuce leaves, and also in coral reefs.

Installation view of ‘Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS’, 2016 Photo by Jenna Bascom. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

 

In this way, each loop and whorl of the act of crocheting forms another representative piece of the larger whole. Each small act of labor completed by the Wertheims and their collaborators, becomes part of the work of showing the state of the oceans’ ecology. And it is just this sort of work that will be necessary to correcting the problems facing the earth, if anything will. On one end of the exhibition is the piece “Midden,” which in a giant fishing net, contains every piece of plastic from the Wertheims’ household garbage, from 2007 to 2011. Hanging over the gallery, ever present and yet somehow hidden in plain sight, the piece drastically understates the huge amount of labor each individual act of labor entailed, to pull the plastic out of the waste stream. This sort of labor, hidden in each loop of Toxic Seas, is the only thing that will save us now.

By Adam Rothstein

Radiant Efflorescence 831 26″ x 22″ x 22,” copper, sterling silver, 23-karat gold leaf. Courtesy of the artist

Metalworker David Huang refers to his works as “vessels,” but it’s little wonder people also call them “treasures.”  On first sight, it’s hard to know what to call them; technically, they’re indeed metallic vessels, but it’s inconceivable that they would ever actually be used.  Their interiors, after all, are lined with 23 karat gold.    They’re indisputably beautiful, but the statement they make isn’t just visual.

Luminous Relic 1424 3.75″ x 4″ x 4,” copper, sterling silver, and 23-karat gold leaf Courtesy of the artist

 

Galleries across the United States have shown Huang’s art, and his work has recently achieved international reach (including multiple shows in Japan).  The exhibition Treasure!  brings Huang’s work to the Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson, Michigan.  Here, owing to the nature of the gallery space, his diminutive copper, silver, and gold vessels are displayed behind glass, and visitors must keep a modest distance.  But they’ll nevertheless be struck by the attention to detail Huang gives each piece.

These vessels loosely follow a formula, though no two are alike.  They’re generally small enough to comfortably fit in the hand, and their asymmetrical, organic shapes conjure mental images of some sort of yet-to-be-discovered exotic fruit.  They’re calculatedly impractical; because they don’t rest upright, we’re inclined to approach them as sculptural rather than utilitarian objects.  If we lean in close, we see that they’re covered in geometric patterns set within geometric patterns.    Others are coated with a thin patina, lending them a smooth, luminous sheen of marbled, earthy shades of green and brown, the result of oxidation.  Gold leaf lines each vessel’s interior, thoroughly undermining their functionality.

Luminosity 1462 3″ x 3.25″ x 3.25,” Hammered copper bowl
Courtesy of the artist

 

Huang likes to define the word “vessel” broadly; it could signify anything from a ship, an egg (some of his vessels indeed look like a sort of egg), or the human body.  The latter seems to carry particular resonance in his work, particularly given the distinct “personalities” he lends each piece.  “I see them as metaphors for us as individuals,” He explains to me. “We have these physical earthy bodies as our vessels housing a radiant spirit within.”

But Huang writes that his work also gently evokes timeless and universal ideals of beauty, observing that gold was associated with spirituality long before it was commoditized and repurposed as money.  Ultimately, gold was (and is) prized not because of its monetary value, but because of its beauty. Huang’s work wonderfully underscores the simple point that beauty itself has intrinsic value.  This is surely what G.K. Chesterton was getting at when he wrote, “All is gold that glitters/For the glitter is the gold.”

Treasure! Is on view at the Ella Sharp Museum until January 28, but his work frequently appears in galleries and museums elsewhere in Michigan.  Much of his work (and many images) can be found on the webpage of LaFontsee Galleries in Grand Rapids, which has a large collection of his work.  Huang’s website not only has a comprehensive set of images, but also some interesting behind-the-scenes studio images.

By Jonathan Rinck

Installation View, 2016.

In the 1993 film, Falling Down, Michael Douglas plays an engineer who suffers a psychotic breakdown while stuck in traffic trying to get to his daughter’s birthday party. He abandons his car on the freeway and proceeds to stalk through Los Angeles on foot, trying desperately to “go home,” while steadily encountering the flotsam and jetsam of the early 90’s recession years on the American West Coast. Among other things, the film is a meditation on crisis, the postulation of a society in decline. Elements of the film now feel dated and uncomfortable (some of the dialogue and the portrayal of Asian and Hispanic minority characters in particular is decidedly problematic), but other elements ring familiar even now, over twenty years later. One scene in particular has always remained with me.[1] As Douglas’ character purchases a snow globe for his daughter from a road side vendor, a man loudly protests outside the bank where he has been a customer for 7 years. Denied a loan, he wields a sign with ‘Not Economically Viable’ written in large letters. He’s quickly arrested, silenced by two blue-clothed policemen while a moody saxophone soundtrack plays out the seemingly inevitable conclusion of his lone protest. As the police car drives away, the character quietly admonishes Douglas’s character through the open car window, “Don’t forget me.”

Installation View, 2016

 

Encountering the work of Kate Mackeson and Henrik Potter together in landlords are not currently collecting rent in self-love, I’m reminded of this scene.[2] Beautifully curated by Francesca von Zedtwitz-Arnim, the sense of underlying exhaustion and apparently insurmountable odds feels unavoidable, and even the title of the show pithily encapsulates the twin predicaments of our times; economic precarity (particularly due to the obscene costs of housing) and a narcissism which is perhaps best exemplified in the antics of the recently elected Donald Trump. While vanity and self-love are enough for someone to win their way into the most powerful political office in the world, on a micro level, and even with all the technological advances made since Douglas’ detached rampage in Falling Down, the situation for most seems to have only gotten worse.

Parsing the accompanying exhibition text the reader encounters an unnerving plethora of contemporary concerns, and seeing some of them (‘precariousness,’ ‘self-preservation,’ ‘uncertain co-existence’) without the customary #hashtag formatting is almost novel. The disclaimer that the “exhibition brings together the work of two artists who may or may not share common ground” feels like a perfect caveat in a world where the word ‘millennial’ is casually used like it could possibly account for the incredible diversity of the people it supposedly refers to. Likewise “a general sense of fluid inter-connectedness of public, domestic and digital environments stands in contrast to a feeling of muteness and uncertainty that underlies everything,” acts as a succinct summation of the overwhelming anxiety permeating our day to day lives.

Henrik Potter, Mourning Bell, 2016 Detail

 

Across one wall of the gallery sit seven panels of closed cell polyethylene foam, created by Henrik Potter. Embedded within them is the ubiquitous physical detritus that can be found scattered across the desks and floors of a thousand tiny bedrooms or cold artists’ studios. Rizla papers, cigarette butts, a zippo lighter, bottle caps, part of a debit card, medication and jewellery to name but a few are sprinkled across the surfaces, semi submerged or obscured by other features. Potter’s works also contain elements of paintings and drawings, installed into the foam as if they share equal significance with the other ephemera. On the opposite side of the gallery are two additional panels, one featuring a selection of anti-fascist and anarchist stickers. Even a decade ago these may have seemed like nothing more than aesthetic signifiers, rather something which seriously needed to be reiterated with any urgency.[3]  (In 1990, three years before Falling Down, American lawyer and writer Mike Godwin coined ‘Godwin’s Law,’ which argued that ‘as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1.’ Fifteen years later, even Godwin himself seems to have acknowledged the terrifying zeitgeist.[4])

Henrik Potter, Mourning Bell, 2016 Detail

 

Offsetting Potter’s panels are Kate Mackeson’s three sculptural works titled Armour, Bullet proof and Bullet proof (blue). Comprised of fabric, wadding, webbing and safety pins the three pieces simultaneously connote Kevlar body armour used by tactical police and the walls of a padded cell in an asylum; the titles themselves clearly suggest the former, the world in which they exist conjuring notions of the latter. These objects exude the conflicted spirit of an age where videos posted online show armoured police in combat with everyone from Black Lives Matters protestors and Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrators, to migrants desperately trying to enter Europe and those fighting absurdly a-symmetrical trade deals in the Pacific.

Kate Mackeson Installation View, 2016

 

Mackeson’s other two pieces, both smaller sculptural constructions, are similarly imbued with the same tension. Named after a dissociative disorder, Fugue State is a slightly bemusing assemblage of silicon, electronics, hair straighteners and aluminium pieces. Two slightly detached female cut-outs stand either side of a chaotic no-man’s-land, created using two layered trays that look like they would more commonly be used for eating in bed; something feels disconnected here, the materials and the figures’ expression all hint at something traumatic. On the floor near the doorway, Occupational Hygiene II is a wine glass, spoon and uncooked egg, all covered in green candle wax; an almost sardonic nod to the hospitality industry and Douglas Copeland’s famous McJob phenomena. Every element of the exhibition feels like a trigger, a familiar placeholder that the audience can’t help but relate with.

The exhibition feels almost unsettling in its reflection of our current status quo, with little of the hand wringing or barnstorming political rhetoric that one might come to expect from work exploring these ideas.  In an era where everything feels somehow irreversibly fractured and fragmented, Potter and Mackeson’s work is like looking at a collection of recognisable pieces scattered like an abandoned jigsaw puzzle on a table. As for the question of what comes next, one can only speculate. As we begin the New Year, let’s hope it’s not more of the same.

By Will Gresson

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7oglIAdnJM

[2] http://www.cellprojects.org/Henrik_Potter_Kate_Mackeson_

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6-bi3jlxk

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/sure-call-trump-a-nazi-just-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-talking-about/?utm_term=.6323c442e480

Restoring the Breath– Sacred Relationship, CCNA Portland Art Museum, courtesy Portland Art Museum.

It’s easy to think of sculpture as art in three dimensions. But at root, sculpture is about space.

Walking into the Center for Contemporary Native Art gallery at the Portland Art Museum to see the Salish weaving show Restoring the Breath— Sacred Relationship, I wasn’t immediately struck by the use of space in the way that I would be at a more traditional exhibition of sculpture. And yet, the space is in the room.

Traditional weavings like these were used to cover the floors, the walls, and human beings. Space was, at one time for a certain group of people, bounded by weavings like these. Indeed, printed on the wall is a quote by Gabriel George, entitled “A Salish Weaver,” which begins:

“A weaver blends and brings together the four directions.

A weaver maps out the universe, travels back in time, and journeys into the future.”

Restoring the Breath– Sacred Relationship, CCNA Portland Art Museum, courtesy Portland Art Museum.

 

And in a sense as the practice of Salish weaving today is about the carrying forward of tradition, it is even more so about creating space. The weaving constitutes a particular way of thinking about and doing culture, in a time and place where the dominant culture does not place such an emphasis on bringing the past forward into the future.

Restoring the Breath– Sacred Relationship, CCNA Portland Art Museum, courtesy Portland Art Museum.

 

With each crossed fiber in the warp and weft, with each knot that is tied, a small sculpture is created in a massive series, arranged to overlap each other and weave together a plateau. Standing back from the works, one cannot see the individual threads, just the textile pattern. Even upon closer inspection, one cannot see the individual fibers in the strand, or the particles of dye that cling to the fiber, or the molecules of the wool that were aligned by the cells of sheep as their coats grew long and shaggy, in one of the many inevitable and yet invisible natural cycles that forms our world. The planet is woven from these sorts of small actions, and through the intentional arrangement of such tiny knots, art is made.

Restoring the Breath– Sacred Relationship, CCNA Portland Art Museum, courtesy Portland Art Museum.

 

Along one wall are recreations of the garments worn by the delegation of Salish chiefs that in 1906, 110 years ago, traveled from their ancestral lands in British Columbia to petition King Edward VII to honor the promises made to them. The recreations are made from modern, commercial wool produced with industrial dyes. The bright colors gleam against the bright white, a stark contrast in themselves, and also against the black-and-white photograph of the Salish chiefs set behind the garments on display. This is, much more literally, about space. It is about the space between the past and the present that we call history. It is about the space between the nature of the earth in that time, and nature as we now construct it. And it is about the space apportioned to Natives across North America, taken from them, given to them, and then taken back.

When I walk into this exhibition space, and see these weavings on display, this is the way in which my notions of space are transformed.

By Adam Rothstein

Riccardo Arena, VAVILON I Solovki Island – Project C. Installation image. Photo by writer.

Whilst the concept suggests a future utopian/dystopian knife-edge, the pieces in “The Plough and Other Stars” use the benefit of hindsight in working with death alternatives, taking in areas such as time travel, fantastical exploration, space travel and non-linear views of humanity. The four gallery-based works refer to events that exploded new pockets of knowledge within a collective consciousness; once viewed in retrospect, however, they show issues in how they were moulded by their receptive environments.

Richard John Jones, for example, paints on free-hanging textiles and scores into unfired slabs of floor-based clay, accompanied by rough glyph-like forms poured with white slip or glaze. Titled Public Sculpture I dissolve in Your Perennial Tears, this and the fabric paintings are suggestive of pre-historic mark-making amongst natural history textbook illustrations of squid-like and pomegranate-like forms.

It can’t be claimed for certain that’s what they are; the work references medieval travel journals that blurred fact and fiction, early forms of mapping the “other” that helped to mould impressions of “here”. The real combined with the exaggerated turns all images into symbols of apparent pasts, and the soft, cracking floor-based work is like a malleable palimpsest or re-formed archaeological dig, cordoned off by the classic mini-rope of the active dig site, or passive museum piece.

Richard John Jones, Public Sculpture I Dissolve in Your Perennial Tears, installation image. Photo by writer.

 

Grounded by a modest size and the ephemerality of its materials, the show plays on the temporal values assigned to museum: that of the exhibition as a continuous presence of irrelevant relics, in a set time and space. The bounds and lifetime of the show are made vague with announced and unannounced programming, such as film screenings by Riccardo Arena, play rehearsals by five artists for a future work to be shown in Wexford Arts Centre, and an upcoming performance lecture by Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili, described as an exchange of letters between a couple and their friend in space, never knowing if the other receives them.

The limited physical presence of the show is latently suggestive of what an imminent and unpredictable temporary event – a new reference point – could evoke. Curator Kate Strain’s interest in performance and performativity – detailed here – is felt in this potential energy, and the pink and brown coloured gels that line the gallery windows. They tint each room almost imperceptibly, until seen in contrast to its neighbouring space: a literal colouring of the works within.

This potentiality and staging is echoed in the drawn-together threads that make up these tangible pieces. Riccardo Arena’s VAVILON 1 Solovki Island – Project C is an installed map of visual references, bruise-like in colour, pinned like specimens to the museum wall. The acetate and paper links events and trajectories through life – space travel, slave ships, low Egyptian and high soviet sculptural reliefs, moons and engineering. The project’s conception brought the artist in close contact with Russian Cosmism, a philosophical movement encouraging thought beyond the realms of human conception and seeking eternal life via space exploration. It resembles a parsing of human history entirely from scratch, ignoring linear narratives for something that can be extrapolated into the future.

Yazan Khalili, Hiding Our Faces Like a Dancing Wind, Installation image. Photo by writer.

 

In the next room, Yazan Khalili’s film Hiding Our Faces Like a Dancing Wind is an agitated computer desktop, contrasting a “live” view through an iPhone photo app (with Lara Khaldi testing the limits of its facial recognition abilities by obscuring her features) with making screenshots from screenshots, again taken inside the same technology. These were captured whilst in front of colonial artefacts in European museums, and like Khaldi, are forms beneath facial recognition’s now-frozen yellow box.

It’s a kind of unofficial re-imaging process, filtered through so much data interpretation it’s dizzying to watch and work out. A text box on screen refers to the removal of humanity and feelings of ancestry from these relocated items. Now exotic curiosities through their re-siting, the process of abstraction is intensified in this constant re-imaging and obscuring, relating fast-pace concealment to slowly degrading memories, new filtering layers and classifications of self.

Together, these referential works have a suggestion of mapped and projected data – showing how any future scientific, technological and spatial advancement has our flawed and footloose past experience as a rudder. The obstacle to realising an immortal process is that mortal life is the only thing ever known, the only frame of reference there is. Despite fitting in a post-human narrative arc, the alternatives remain as enigmatic as death.

“The Plough and Other Stars” continues at IMMA, Dublin until 26th February 2017.

By Dorothy Hunter

The Refusal of Time with collaboration of Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison Film Still, 2012. 5-channel video projection, colour, sound, megaphones, breathing machine 30 minutes Courtesy William Kentridge, Marian Goodman Gallery, Goodman Gallery and Lia Rumma Gallery

William Kentridge is an inescapably South African artist, born in Johannesburg in 1955 during the apartheid era. His parents, both attorneys, represented some of those marginalised by the racist regime of segregation implemented by the National Party in 1948, and finally defeated in 1994 with the election of celebrated African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela as President. This history casts a long shadow over his work, as it does with so many other facets of life in South Africa, and commentators have pointed out that a broad understand of the nation’s complicated (and often traumatic) history is something of a prerequisite for understanding much of his practice. 

While this certainly feels true of the works that make up Thick Time, the retrospective of recent multi-media installation currently showing at Whitechapel Gallery in London, arguably as important is a grounding in 20th Century art and film history. Kentridge is known for a series of recurring motifs and figures, something which has evolved out of a unique approach which encompasses drawing, film, animation, stage and set design, sculpture and performance among other things. Moving through the installations on display across both levels of the gallery, his signature aesthetics can be overwhelming at times, while the moving image components in particular reveal a deep affinity and appreciation for early 20th Century cinema in both technique and presentation.

The Refusal of Time. with collaboration of Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison. Film Still, 2012. 5-channel video projection, colour, sound, megaphones, breathing machine. 30 minutes. Courtesy William Kentridge, Marian Goodman Gallery, Goodman Gallery and Lia Rumma Gallery

 

On the ground floor of the space, the exhibition opens with the mammoth The Refusal of Time. Incorporating five screens, a large central kinetic sculptural piece and smaller sculptural elements, the installation also boasts a dynamic multi-channel soundtrack composed by Philip Miller. Adding bellicose horns alongside other orchestral flourishes and sung/spoken word segments, the piece is one of several collaborations with Miller throughout the exhibition. Figures dance and move across the screens, while texts and pages of books flip as if turned by invisible hands. In a theme revisited elsewhere in Thick Time, the pace and repercussions of technological development are explored here in terms both advanced human understanding, but also human loss. Arguably one of the most memorable moments in the whole show is the transformation of one body of figures from dancing carnival band to downtrodden refugees. Much of the action takes place either in labs or studios, hinting at a kind of performative element that moves beyond the simple object being created into a wider antagonism of process; questions of the how and why permeate, and perhaps most pressingly of all, at what cost?

The Nose (with Strawberries), 2012. Tapestry weave with embroidery. Warp: polyester. Weft and embroidery: mohair, acrylic and polyester. 340 x 230 cm. Woven by the Stephens Tapestry Studio. Courtesy William Kentridge, Marian Goodman Gallery, Goodman Gallery and Lia Rumma Gallery

 

Beyond this first installation towards the back of the downstairs gallery space the curator has installed a series of Kentridge’s Tapestries, made in collaboration with Stephen’s Tapestry Studios in Diepsloot, Johannesburg. The figure of the horse is one of the artist’s most striking recurrent motifs and in these massive pieces they are juxtaposed against old maps, simultaneously evoking notions of nomadic story telling and colonial histories of expansion. The horses bring to mind the statues found in capital cities all over Europe, the rider atop usually a King or conquering military figure, while the tapestries are cleverly linked here to a library containing a selection of Kentridge’s artist books, exhibition catalogues and monographs. The combination of the woven maps, the statues and the long reading desks recall the old libraries and halls where much of the world was drawn and redrawn by European powers, emphasising the political critique at the heart of the artist’s work.

In a small room past the Tapestry Library is the short film Second-Hand Reading, created by repurposing a Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and several other texts as canvases, and then drawing over the top of them. The artist appears as a slowly pacing figure; hands in pockets, head down, meditative. The familiar tree and bird patterns, horns and other figures all move in and out of the film, while Neo Muyanga’s gorgeous score pulsates slowly beneath the action. In hindsight, the film offers perhaps the most contemplative moment in the whole exhibition, the throb of the images creating a mood that echoes the artist’s slow, reflective stride. The political elements found elsewhere in Thick Time are by no means absent however. Slogans appear like manifesto headings; ‘Let the Drama Begin at the End,’ ‘End with Love,’ while the drawings slowly fade and morph throughout.

Installation view of Right Into Her Arms, 2016. Miniature model theatre with projected images, drawings and props. Wood, steel, cardboard, found paper and found objects. 300 x 244 x 125 cm. Courtesy William Kentridge, Marian Goodman Gallery, Goodman Gallery and Lia Rumma Gallery

 

Upstairs, Right Into Her Arms is the exhibition’s strongest nod to Kentridge’s work with puppetry, theatre and set design, and in particular his work with Opera. The sculpture combines moving panels, text and video projections made during workshops for a production of Alban Berg’s Lulu in 2015, alongside a soundtrack which features Ursonate by Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and compositional work from Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg (Berg’s contemporaries from Austria). The basis of so much of the work is steeped in early 20th Century European modernism, yet the moving image component brings in familiar South African elements through costuming and movement.

The seven screen film work 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès is combined with a pair of stand-alone films, Day For Night and Journey To The Moon (the latter a reference to Méliès’ ‘A Trip to the Moon from 1902). Here, a slightly dizzying cornucopia of Kentridge’s motifs and familiar visual elements all appear in a kind of vast symphony. The horns which appear in almost every other room feature, as do stovetop coffee pots (one actually serves as the rocket which heads to the moon). Charcoal and ink flourishes, repurposed books slowly torn apart in reverse, and recurring film techniques like stop-motion and animation are also utilised. In the accompanying text, reference is made to the performative legacy of artists like Jackson Pollock and Bruce Nauman, whose movements in their studios merge with the laboratories and engine rooms found in the central installation downstairs. The site of production and enactments of technological development are all at play here, reinforced by Kentridge’s own performative activities in his studio. His wife Anne Stanwix also cameos in Journey to the Moon, playing the archetypal studio nude and muse, never acknowledged by the artist but inescapably present. The creative process qua process is under examination, with multiple microscopes probing the different but interconnected workings of the site of production. Meanwhile Philip Miller’s soundtrack mirrors the live piano music which used to accompany silent films in their heyday, again adding further performative elements.

7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Day for Night and Journey to the Moon, 2003. 9-channel video installation with sound. 16 mm and 35 mm film based on live-action, video and animated drawing, transferred to video, colour. Courtesy William Kentridge, Marian Goodman Gallery, Goodman Gallery and Lia Rumma Gallery

 

The final installation work, entitled O Sentimental Machine, brings much of the underlying political commentary in Kentridge’s other work to the fore. One of the five screens features the exiled Soviet politician Leon Trotsky delivering a speech, comically mimicked by the artist (resplendent with a fake Trotsky goatee) on another screen as he dictates his manifesto to a studious but seemingly overworked secretary. On the other panels, hallmarks of industrial development like typewriters and cameras slowly sink beneath rising waters, crucial touchstones of 20th Century development becoming ‘history’ (with all loaded significations implicit) before our very eyes. The ubiquitous horn motif serves here as both director’s and politician’s megaphone. The link between these mechanical advancements and the political turmoil of the times is pervasive in Kentridge’s installations, and here the artist hones in on these observations explicitly.

The Refusal of Time, with collaboration of Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison, Film Still, 2012. 5-channel video projection, colour, sound, megaphones, breathing machine. 30 minutes. Courtesy William Kentridge, Marian Goodman Gallery, Goodman Gallery and Lia Rumma Gallery

 

Thick Time is a difficult show to write about, not least of all because the incredibly intricate and visually stunning installations are but a snapshot of what for the artist has been a long and multifaceted career. This is not a retrospective of Kentridge, so much as a curated selection from a particular (and recent) part of his diverse oeuvre. The gallery makes a point of informing visitors of the immersive nature of the exhibition, advising them to leave at least one hour and thirty minutes to fully experience the show. In hindsight, that would be at a minimum. The sheer depth of his aesthetic approach and the sometimes subtle political references to his homeland can make it difficult to really access everything that there is to experience in these works, but this is by no means a criticism of the work or the artist. Rather it’s a necessary acknowledgement that William Kentridge’s work is a multi-layered exploration of the technological and the political, the lyrical and the geographic, the historical and the contemporary. To really understand what is happening here, inevitably it’s going to take some time.

By Will Gresson

Richard Misrach (b. 1949) Wall, Jacumba, California, 2009 . Inkjet print. © Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, LA

The border between Mexico and the United States runs nearly 2,000 miles over terrain of mountains, rivers, desert, farm fields, backyards and urban concrete. No other international boundary sees as many legal crossings as the 350 million per year between the forty-eight secured crossings. The official border region extends thirty-seven miles from either side of the legal boundary to include several states in Mexico and California, Arizona. New Mexico and Texas in the United States. Conflicts have increased scrutiny of a porous border since the 1850’s including the Mexican Revolution of the 1910’s, attempts by federal agencies to keep Mexican livestock and disease under control, drugs in the 1960’s, the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990’s and terrorist attacks on September 11. Since 2005, the United has spent over $23 billion attempting to secure the border with renewed calls during the recent presidential election for more security.

Zapatello, 2014. Modeled after Leonardo DaVinci’s il martello a camme. © Guillermo Galindo, courtesy of the artist

 

Just like the many landscapes, locations in the border region are affected differently by the increased emphasis on border security. In some areas, one can hardly notice any changes beyond a few more border patrol vehicles while other areas have taken on the appearance of a highly militarized zone prepping impending war. In some locations, hardships are found with the landscape or fear of drug cartels. In others, families live on either side, visiting as frequently as those who commute daily to work or school in the other country but increasing harassment still creates tension in the region. For all the media sensationalism and political hyperbole, an actual visit to the border region is interesting for comparison, but can be extremely dull if one is expecting any action-packed moments designed by Hollywood.

Perhaps this is why Richard Misrach’s decades long approach to photography is so relevant to the exploration of the border regions. His deadpan style focuses on the technical expertise with an emphasis on color, light and an objective perspective that pushes against clear definition of journalism and fine art. Beginning in 1970, Misrach has explored the interaction of humans with the landscape, particularly with political undertones that explore poverty, war, industrialism and tourism.   Since 2004, with significant emphasis in 2009, Misrach has pushed further into region with his large-format camera and iPhone by his side. The large-scale photographs in Border Cantos reflect a method of visual prose poetry with each photograph literally engulfing the viewer into an elegant moment that can stand alone or be intricately woven throughout a larger narrative.

Zapatófono, 2012. Shoe, gravel, wood handle, amplified wooden tray. © Guillermo Galindo, courtesy of the artist

 

In Border Cantos, Misrach’s images beckon the viewer and set the foundation for a reciprocal relationship with the sculptures and music of his collaborator, Mexican born musician and composer Guillermo Galindo, at multiple junctures. The most immediate example of this is that the found objects Galindo uses to create his instruments are captured first by Misrach in his photos before collected and given to Galindo. Many of the images are the catalyst for Galindo’s graphic work of abstract musical scores that invoke some Cageian crossover between avant-garde compositions and topographical maps. The music recorded and performances by Galindo complete the new language developed by the team of artists. Altogether, the imagery, physical recontextualization of the border artifacts and sounds that are transposed into a recorded orchestra create songs of the border region, giving it a renewed humanist quality that is lost in the political dialogue and policy actions.

Exhibition view.

 

One of Galindo’s performances, Limpia (Cleansing), is titled from a popular spiritual cleansing ceremony of Mexico and throughout Latin America. Still popular today, the rituals are used to cure the afflicted from economic hardships and involve complex gestural movements with instruments. With a jug shaker, a piñata covered in shotgun shells, and a large sculpture, Zappatello, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s hammer machine, Galindo performs his own limpia for the border region. Another performances include Efigie (Effigy), a stringed instrument with clothing on a human form that Misrach saw repeatedly without explanation. For Cosas de niños (Children’s Things), Galindos drew inspiration from knowledge of the increase in unaccompanied children travelling across the border by using artifacts belonging to children for a carefully played “symphony for the missing”.

The orchestrated performance as part of exhibition involves eight hours carefully composed sounds that capture those characteristics of the border and interpretations of the stories behind the artifacts from Misrach’s photographs. Galindo’s sculptures are all instrumental, the imagery often related to symbols of his native Mexico whether a weaving loom, traditional wind instruments or the landscape itself. Heard throughout the museum’s winding gallery, the music plays perfectly into the background of the exhibition, culminating in the back complete with musical scores and the sculpturess creating the music.

Exhibition view.

 

The individual instruments can be heard in person or online on the Border Cantos website as well as the performances. A nearly 300-page book accompanies the exhibition in which Misrach has divided his photographs into eight typologies that speak to different aspects of the border. All writing and information involving Border Cantos is in English and Spanish to further emphasize the symbiotic relationship between the two artists. The work together transforms the physical place and line of the border into a space that speaks a new conversation that moves around the abstracted notion of a boundary that seeks to limit, not include the many humanistic qualities that make up its existence in the first place.

Border Cantos originated at the San Jose Museum of Art and is currently at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art from October 15 to December 31, 2016. The exhibition will travel to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from February 18 to April 24, 2017.

By Jake Weigel

Hybrid Holism, Dress, July 2012. 3-D printed UV-curable polymer. In collaboration with Julia Koerner and Materialise. High Museum of Art, Supported by the Friends of Iris van Herpen, 2015.170 . Photo by Bart Oomes, No 6 Studios

How could anyone actually wear these? I skeptically wondered as I took in the 3-D printed haute couture dresses on view at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM), some having the appearance of physically-restrictive other-worldly exoskeletons.  As clothing goes, much of this hardly functional, but Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen repudiates the tired adage that “form follows function,” instead approaching fashion as a highly conceptual and sculptural art form.  A celebrated pioneer in 3-D printed fashion, van Herpen’s work emphatically makes the point that “machine-made” doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of craftsmanship, finish, and quality.  Functional or not, her work its undeniably beautiful.    

Van Herpen is a staple during Fashion Week in Paris and London, and her work (worn by the likes of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé) was on view at the Metropolitan Art Museum earlier this year.  Transforming Fashion is the first exhibition to bring her work to the Midwest, showcasing about 50 works from 15 collections spanning from 2008 through 2016.

Refinery Smoke Dress Refinery Smoke, Dress, July 2008 Untreated woven metal gauze, cow leather, cotton Groninger Museum, 2012.0196 Photo by Bart Oomes, No 6 Studios

 

These works are highly conceptual.  Her Refinery Smoke Dress, for example, from a line created in 2008, was inspired by both the toxicity and the beauty of factory smoke.    Its massive, billowing form, crafted from oxidized metal gauze (lending the work a gritty, urban character) really does seem vaporous and ethereal, its coiling outer fringes seemingly on the brink of dissolving into air.  Other lines are inspired by such varied subjects as lucid dreaming, the electronics of the body, terraforming (modifying the biospheres of other planets), and cymatics (the study of the shapes of sound waves). Sometimes collaborating with scientists, musicians, photographers, and architects, van Herpen’s approach is interdisciplinary.

Capriole, Ensemble, July 2011. In collaboration with Isaie Bloch and Materialise. 3D printed polyamide. Groninger Museum, 2012.0209 . Photo by Bart Oomes, No 6 Studios

 

But it’s in 3-D printing that she pushes fashion forward.  For van Herpen, printing is no shortcut (some of these, after the design itself was complete, took days to actually finish printing).  One of the dresses from her Lucid collection is comprised of 5,000 individual 3D-printed pieces, all stitched together.  In collaboration with Japanese shoe designer Noritaka Tatehana, she even printed translucent crystal which serves as the base for a laser-cut leather shoe.  Van Herpen takes the machine, so often associated with cheapness and mass-production, and harnesses it as a tool to produce dazzlingly complex, one-of-a-kind dresses.

Hacking Infinity, Shoes, 2015 In collaboration with Noritaka Tatehana and 3D Systems Laser-cut cow leather, 3-D printed photopolymer, and stereolithography resin Collection of the designer Photograph ©NORITAKA TATEHANA

 

This is a beast of a show, spilling out of the GRAM’s regular temporary exhibition spaces and filling the entirety of the third floor, all its galleries momentarily emptied of works from the museum’s permanent collection.  It’s the sort of treatment you might expect for a hefty retrospective of a long and crowded career.  In spite of its massive scale, Transforming Fashion doesn’t feel overwhelming or pretentious; it’s surprisingly welcoming and interactive.  At several stations throughout the moodily dark gallery spaces, curious viewers can touch the materials these dresses are made of, whether it be umbrella rigging or stainless steel fabric.  And a two large flat-screen TVs show van Herpen’s works glamorously set in motion by runway models who provide incontrovertible proof that, indeed, people can actually wear these dresses.

Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion was co-organized by the High Museum of Art, and is supplemented by an exhibition catalogue.  It runs at the GRAM through January 15, 2017.

By Jonathan Rinck

Caroline Rothwell, Invisible. El río Amazonas, después de Thomas Wiffen

La XIII Bienal de Cuenca (Ecuador) que se celebra este año lleva el título de “Impermanencia”. En su presentación curatorial, Dan Cameron reflexiona sobre un tipo de arte que habla de las inquietudes que conlleva la condición transitoria de nuestra propia existencia. Durante siglos, el arte ha estado al servicio de nuestra tendencia innata a la perpetuación pero recientemente, señala, se puede interpretar “una separación de la comunidad artística internacional en dos campos: aquellos cuya función es la de especular en la rentabilidad del arte a futuro, y aquellos que usan el arte como una herramienta para mirar el statu quo del planeta y sugerir otras posibilidades de ver el mundo para compartirlas con nuestros coetáneos.”

Reko Rennie “I was always here” (“Siempre estuve aquí”)
Foto: Natalia Bradshaw

 

En este contexto se enmarca también una de las exposiciones paralelas a la Bienal, inaugurada el pasado 21 de octubre en el Salón del Pueblo. “Frágil” es la primera exposición de arte contemporáneo australiano que se presenta en Ecuador que además va acompañada de un programa VIP para coleccionistas australianos. Los cuatro artistas seleccionados por Natalia Bradshaw recorren temas de identidad, medio ambiente, historia y ciencia desde una perspectiva que no es ajena a la propia realidad ecuatoriana, que comparte con Australia cuestiones indígenas, un pasado colonial y varios ecosistemas de incalculable valor para el planeta.

María Fernanda Cardoso, nacida en Colombia y residente en Australia, es tal vez la artista con mayor proyección internacional del grupo. Sus observaciones sobre la estética del mundo animal y vegetal, iniciadas en los años 90 en forma de vídeo y de instalaciones compuestas de elementos animales han ido evolucionando hacia un tipo de investigación que ha culminado en su tesis doctoral con el proyecto “Museo de Órganos Copuladores” en 2012. En la exposición de Cuenca presenta sus obras mas recientes siguiendo en el campo de la reproducción animal, en este caso dos vídeos sobre la “danza nupcial” de las diminutas arañas maratus splendens y maratus volans. El uso de vídeo y audio de alta resolución nos permite apreciar el increíble colorido y sonido, imperceptible al oído humano, de estos animales de tan solo 3 milímetros en todo su despliegue estético.

Janet Laurence, “Lives of plants” (“Las vidas de las plantas) Foto: Natalia Bradshaw

 

La obra de Janet Laurence, una de las artistas más destacadas del panorama artístico australiano, gira en torno al deterioro del planeta a causa de la acción humana. Firme defensora de la necesidad de acabar con la visión antropocéntrica de la naturaleza que ha llevado a la desaparición de especies y ecosistemas, sus instalaciones nos hablan de un planeta herido de muerte que requiere una reacción inmediata antes de que su destrucción sea irreversible. Su trabajo siempre site-specific se divide, por una parte, en proyectos de arte público e intervenciones en espacios al aire libre donde a menudo introduce especies de plantas nativas y, por otra, en instalaciones en espacios expositivos, en las que combina recursos museográficos como vitrinas e incluso especies procedentes de colecciones naturales con utensilios de laboratorio que nos sugieren ideas de curación, tratamientos de reanimación y resucitación.

Reko Rennie es un artista aborigen de origen Kamilaroi. En su obra utiliza diseños e iconografía propios de su cultura, en particular el rombo que identifica a su pueblo, a los que superpone textos reivindicativos relativos a la identidad indígena con una estética urbana, a veces graffitera a veces pop. El carácter callejero de sus obras es tan importante como las alusiones a sus ancestros puesto que la vocación artística de Rennie surgió en el ambiente de street art del suburbio de Melbourne donde creció. Esta estética urbana es esencial para dejar constancia de una cultura que no se ha quedado estancada en una imagen idealizada del arte indígena. I was Always Here (“siempre estuve aquí”), la obra que presenta en Cuenca, es una declaración que pueden suscribir todas las comunidades indígenas del mundo.

Caroline Rothwell, Invisible. El río Amazonas, después de Thomas Wiffen

 

Instrumentos de medición, métodos de clasificación y museos científicos están en el origen de las indagaciones de la británica afincada el Sídney Caroline Rothwell. Decir que su obra refleja la ambición humana por controlar los fenómenos de la naturaleza tal vez sería simplificar. Sus esculturas son muy versátiles y con un acabado en apariencia artesanal, con un punto de imperfección, que por un momento pueden desviar la atención de todo proceso de investigación previo. Sin embargo, en ellas Rothwell ha trabajado muy concienzudamente diferentes factores como la calidad de los materiales, que tienen un papel determinante, igual que sus aspectos formales, para dar con el formato idóneo en cada contexto.

“Frágil” se puede ver hasta el 31 de diciembre.

By Paula Llull

Installation shot. Eat Pomegranate Photography

Once during a 2015 performance, Chinese artist Hu Jiayi precariously sat atop a ladder, her body strapped with potentially lethal knives and hatchets; little wonder that she says viewers typically find her work “sharp.”  But “sharp” could just as easily describe many of the other artists in the exhibition Fire Within: A New Generation of Chinese Artists, on view at East Lansing’s Broad Art Museum, a space which, since opening in 2012, continues to host reliably muscular exhibitions of contemporary art from all over the world.  Fire Within, which debuted at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, brings together an eclectic group of twenty-seven emerging Chinese female artists (most in their 20s and 30s), continuing the Broad’s tradition of showcasing socially-conscious art while fostering cross-cultural dialogue.

Curated by Wang Chunchen (who also recently curated the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale), the exhibition is arranged under the three themes of Body, Tradition, and Identity.  Much of the art is strikingly intimate and unnervingly personal.  For example, after undergoing facial bone-reduction surgery (an increasingly common cosmetic practice in China), artist Pei Li created a cast of her newly restructured face; this sits like a sculpted marble bust on a wooden base, and metaphorically speaks to the ways women are expected to adhere to ideals imposed by society.

Installation shot. Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

The topic of conformity is addressed more whimsically in Mi Yuming’s interactive Performing the Third Gender, a playful installation in which visitors are invited to inflate balloons until they thunderously burst (the sound considerably amplified by a Plexiglas box), scaring the wits out of all unsuspecting visitors in adjacent rooms.  Inspired in part by Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, the installation allows visitors to metaphorically shatter societal expectations and, more literally, shatter the customary polite silence of the gallery space.

Other works grapple with political issues, such as government surveillance or China’s one-child policy (the latter movingly addressed by Zhou Zinshan’s series of abstract acrylic and pen Letters to Heaven).  But not all the works here address such weighty content.  Gao Sihua’s painted dreamscapes are pure joy, their paint applied so thickly as to resemble a decorated cake.  Playfully re-defining what constitutes a painting, Ju Ting applies so many layers of thick acrylic paint onto her canvasses that her paintings become sculptural in every sense; her work transposes color-field painting into three dimensions.

Installation shot. Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

This exhibition is kaleidoscopic and varied in both media and subject matter. A handsome exhibition catalogue (well worth the price, its text is in both English and Chinese) features interviews with all the artists, helpfully elucidating the ideas behind some of the more cryptic and personal works on view.  Fire Within is both substantive and challenging, and visitors will encounter a vast array of media ranging from pen and ink to resin and menstrual blood. But whatever the medium, these emerging artists are uncannily honest and refreshingly unpretentious.

Fire Within runs until February 12, 2017.  More information can be found on the website of the Broad Art Museum.

By Jonathan Rinck

Ragnar Kjartansson, Exhibition installation view, Barbican Art Gallery. 14 July – 4 September 2016. © Tristan Fewings/ Getty Images. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine New York and i8 gallery Reykjavik

The Visitors (2012) is a nine-screen multi-channel video installation by Ragnar Kjartansson, filmed across multiple rooms in a two-hundred year old villa on the banks of the Hudson River in upstate New York. Featuring the artist himself playing acoustic guitar and singing in a bathtub, alongside a cast of musicians from Iceland’s tight-knit music scene, the collective performs a haunting piece of what Kjartansson calls “feminine nihilistic gospel.” The music slowly dips and wanes, equal parts evocative cacophony and barely audible whisper.  In 2015, the work was exhibited at Brewer Street Car Park, a space curated by The Vinyl Factory in London’s Soho district, and was critically acclaimed as one of the year’s exhibition highlights.

It was with no small measure of anticipation then that my partner and I approached the new retrospective of the artist’s work at London’s Barbican, which was on display from 14 July until 4 September this year (and is on display at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., from 14 October 2016 to 8 January 2017). Featuring The Visitors as well as a selection of both early and more recent work, the exhibition was the first major showing of Kjartansson’s work in the UK.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Exhibition installation view. Barbican Art Gallery, 14 July – 4 September 2016. © Tristan Fewings/ Getty Images. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine New York and i8 gallery Reykjavik

 

As the audience entered the gallery, they were immediately greeted by the sight of a small band of troubadours performing surrounded by discarded beer bottles. Projected onto the wall was a video loop of a couple sharing an intimate embrace in a kitchen, framed in the gloriously soft-core aesthetics of the 1970s. The film was Iceland’s first full-length feature, entitled Morðsaga (Murder Story, 1977), and the couple on screen are the artist’s parents who are famous actors in their native country. The story goes that Ragnar Kjartansson was conceived during the same period that the film was shot; the installation then functioning as a kind of origin story for viewers as they begin to trace the artist’s career.  Entitled Take Me Here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2011), the performers sing the lines of dialogue with an element of poetic lyricism not dissimilar to the tone of The Visitors, stretching out the cringe-worthy exchange into something imbued with epic drama as it soars towards it’s (genuinely amusing) crescendo. The performance combines elements of repetition and endurance, traits that link Kjartansson’s work with artists like Marina Abramovic or Chris Burden, while also bringing in other elements from the artist’s background as the son of thespians.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Barbican Art Gallery. 14 July – 4 September 2016. © Tristan Fewings/ Getty Images. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine New York and i8 gallery Reykjavik

 

Self-induced exhaustion is something which also appears in the upstairs space dedicated to Kjartansson’s project for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Over the course of six months, the artist painted daily portraits of friend and performance artist Páll Haukur Björnsson while he lounged around the space drinking beers and smoking cigarettes. That project is represented here by a massive collection of paintings, and a single photograph of the pair in action. The staggering amount of paintings on show are a testament to Kjartansson’s feat of endurance, while the amount of beer bottles in the photograph give the audience a similarly appreciative perspective on Björnsson’s own tenacity. Rumour has it that the singers performing at the exhibition entrance were also meant to be able to chain smoke through their gruelling eight-hour rendition, however strict health and safety laws prohibited it (much to the artist’s displeasure). The link between the two works is still clear, however.

Another of Kjartansson’s most well-known works is A Lot of Sorrow (2013), a piece that featured Brooklyn band The National performing their track ‘Sorrow’ for six hours on repeat. That video is featured here alongside the performance Sorrow Conquers Happiness (2006) captured in the video God. In the former, the band work through 105 versions of their song to a jubilant crowd, the downbeat aura of their music mirrored somehow by the ever more subdued appearance of the performers. By the time they get to the end, the group is visibly exhausted, and there is an element of palpable relief on stage as Kjartansson moves from musician to musician, whispering in their ear that their 6 hour exertion is complete. In the latter video, Kjartansson oscillates between a mournful croon and an exuberant bellow, repeating over and over the title phrase while backed by an elegantly tuxedoed band. Again, endurance, repetition, but also a tonal fixation on the sombre that seems to hover in the background of so much of his work.

Ragnar Kjartansson. Exhibition installation view Barbican Art Gallery 14 July – 4 September 2016. © Tristan Fewings/ Getty Images. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine New York and i8 gallery Reykjavik

 

In retrospective shows such as this, there’s often an unexpected highlight to be found in the older work. At the Barbican, that might be Kjartansson’s collaboration with Laddi, the alias of Icelandic comedian and performer Thorhallur Sigurdsson. Entitled Guilt Trip (2007), the 20 minute video work features Laddi walking around a largely featureless, snow covered setting. Dressed in black, and carrying a shotgun with a bright yellow bag of bullets, Laddi periodically stops to contemplate the void, before firing, deadpan, into nothingness. In a short introductory essay on the i8 gallery website, artist and curator Markús Thór Andrésson suggests “paradoxically Laddi is in the middle of nowhere aiming coincidentally at nothing – he might as well be shooting blanks. Has he wasted his life entertaining an unknown audience? Has he lost himself on the way? Are the targets for his bullets the numerous identities that he has put out there?” [1] The genius of the performance comes from its simplicity. One the one hand, there is the vague sense of being lost in someone’s existential crisis, completely adrift in a vacuum they cannot escape. Yet in an almost Beckettian way, the longer it goes on the funnier and more engrossing it becomes.

It’s the almost absurdist attention to the bleak in these pieces which gives Kjartansson’s work it’s haunting prescience, while his subtle but masterful comedic touches elevate the work beyond the self-indulgent and into something much more relatable and inclusive. Creating a sense of solidarity in the void is difficult enough, but with clever staging and humorous slights of hand, the artist somehow achieves it all without necessarily making it clear to the audience that that’s what they are witnessing. In each of these works, particularly the moving image pieces, you begin to identify with the performers, something which perhaps separates his work from the otherwise likeminded artists mentioned previously.  The audience becomes invested, and as his profile continues to rise, it will be interesting to see how he will maintain the tension as the landscape around him begins to seem less and less empty.

By Will Gresson

Ragnar Kjartansson will be on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC from October 14, 2016 until January 8, 2017.

[1] http://i8.is/exhibition/ragnar-kjartansson-2/introduction/

Catie Newell, Overnight, 2016, Courtesy of the artist. © Catie Newell

Streetlights serve a vital role in any city, keeping property value afloat and deterring crime.  But the Detroit Free Press acknowledged in an article that, until recently, Detroit’s street-lighting system was “an international embarrassment and the worst in the nation,” with around only half of its streetlights operational due to copper scrapping and neglect.  In places, the resultant dark, moody cityscape seemed eerily at odds with Detroit’s high population.  Since 2013, the city has been installing tens of thousands of new light emitting diode (LED) streetlights.  As this massive undertaking progressed, Catie Newell, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan, began to find surprising beauty within Detroit’s gritty, nocturnal urban chiaroscuro.

Newell, a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and American representative at the 2012 Architecture Venice Biennale, now fills the Stenn Gallery (the contemporary art gallery at the University of Michigan Museum of Art) with her multimedia exhibition Overnight. This ground-level corner gallery space boasts of two perpendicular glass walls which allow inquisitive passers-by to peer inside.

Catie Newell, Nightly Series, 2015, Courtesy of the artist, © Catie Newell

 

Her photography of Detroit’s nightscapes lines the other two walls.   They’re part of an ongoing series (Nightly), for which Newell intrepidly traverses Detroit’s streets in the pre-dawn hours, capturing images of mostly dark spaces yet to receive the new LED lights.  These images are mostly black at first, but closer viewing reveals silhouetted homes and buildings, or small idiosyncratic patches of backlit foliage.

These photographs frame and contextualize a suspended installation of two cascading veils of wire so thin that, when backlit by the gallery’s street-facing windows, they’re nearly indiscernible.  But at night the entangled wire is gently illuminated against the otherwise dark gallery, in close mimicry of Newell’s surrounding photography.

It’s visually striking (particularly at night), but the installation also tactfully sheds light on some ironies embedded within the initiative to restore Detroit’s street lights. Because the old streetlights had copper at their base, they were frequently salvaged and stolen.  Redressing this problem, Detroit installed copper-free LED lights.  They’re much less prone to theft, but the 150 watt lights diffuse much less light than the prior 75 watt copper lights.  Consequently, some places, though previously illuminated, are now ironically in the dark.  Referencing these issues, Newell’s installation is comprised of copper wire, aluminum wire, and faintly lit LED lights.  Entangling the wires makes the system electronically inefficient, and serves as a visual metaphor for what’s happening in Detroit.

Catie Newell, Overnight, 2016, Courtesy of the artist © Catie Newell

 

To the city’s credit (and much is due), the task of illuminating Detroit with over 60,000 street lights is nearly complete, and under budget at that.  In terms of streetlights per mile, the city is now on par with Dallas and Seattle.  Nevertheless, Overnight subtlety and gently illuminates the bureaucratic weirdness that inevitably accompanies such a Herculean undertaking.

Overnight runs through November 6.

More information on Overnight (and other recent projects) can be found on the website of Alibi Studio, of which Newell is the founding principal.

By Jonathan Rinck

Installation photos of Leroy Setziol exhibition. Photos: Cody Maxwell. Courtesy of Portland Art Museum.

Coming into contact with the wood carvings of Leroy Setziol is like entering a forest, but abstracted. Twenty-three of his works are currently on view at the Portland Art Museum, until October 30, 2016.

The forests of the Pacific Northwest, which Setziol called home for over fifty years, do not appear as wood. The trees are obvious, but they are covered over with scales of bark, which are covered over again with seasons of moss growth, lichens, and even whole ferns. When the trees finally fall, their wood eventually becomes exposed at the root, but are soon covered over again— with dirt and stones held captive in the twisted dendritical supply lines, with the fruiting bodies of mushrooms, and the eventual black rot, that returns the entire forest back into the dirt below.

Installation photos of Leroy Setziol exhibition. Photos: Cody Maxwell. Courtesy of Portland Art Museum.

 

Leroy Setziol’s carvings, on the other hand, show the substantive strength of the wood in full display. Oiled to exhibit the grains, and characteristically unsanded, Setziol’s work acknowledges the material of the wood as primary to the act of sculpture. The effort of the artist is evident, as he touches the wood little by little at the end of his chisel, leaving a preponderance of marks until the design has shaped the wood into the piece of art.

And yet, in Setziol’s work, that element of the forest comes back. The motifs are overlapping, as the rigid geometries of his style create a panoply of layered images. As he takes apart the tree itself, creating individual blocks and shapes that are then reunited into a larger panel, that chaotic cycle of the cthonic darkness of the forest understories is re-established. Within those abstracted, idealistic grains, the modernist grids come full circle to resemble the natural world again.

Installation photos of Leroy Setziol exhibition. Photos: Cody Maxwell. Courtesy of Portland Art Museum.

 

Setziol’s work is now all over the Pacific Northwest, in businesses and hotels, in churches and in homes. As he pulled wood from the outside, he introduces it into the inside, creating a vital connection between the two opposing forms of space that those in the region inhabit. And in a time period in which reclaimed, raw boards are in fashion for interior architectural design, his carvings give an extraordinary sense of detail to his architectural features, missing from many contemporary spaces. One can imagine the interior spaces in which Setziol’s work still hangs containing a warm vitality, a sense of the wood as alive, not present in simple timbers or planks. It is the forest within his work, which draws a person in, just as many are drawn to the Northwest.

By Adam Rothstein

Fallen Comrade, 2009. Artist: David Greenwood. Photo courtesy of the Michigan Legacy Art Park

This sculpture park took shape around 14,000 years ago, when a retreating glacier raked out the vistas and hills that now comprise the rugged terrain of the Legacy Art Park, a thirty-acre patch of earth not far from Michigan’s famous Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  But credit certainly also goes to the late David Barr, a visionary sculptor and poet, who had the tenacity to found an art park and educational center in which contemporary sculpture could unobtrusively integrate into nature. 

You certainly won’t experience anything like this on Fifth Avenue’s museum row.   Put on hiking boots and mosquito spray.  Walking sticks are thoughtfully provided by park management (best to take one; the descents can get precariously steep).  This park is unpretentious, but visitors should be prepared, on occasion, to round a corner and stumble upon a sculpture by an art-world heavyweight.

Sawpath 4, 1999. David Barr. Photo: Raffi Appel

 

Opened in 1995 on property belonging to Crystal Mountain Resort, this park’s vision is to celebrate local history and local beauty.  Its collection holds just under fifty sculptures, mostly by contemporary Michigan artists.  Some of these sculptures are difficult to find, and not just because they’re spread out along a curvaceous two mile pathway that ambles through thickly forested, hilly terrain, but because the sculptures are so organic, much like the earth-art of Andy Goldsworthy.

The earthen Serpent Mound by Patricia Innis, for example, respectfully mimics the much larger serpent mounds created by the Native Americans of the Mississippi Valley (there’s a particularly famous example in neighboring Ohio).  In the autumn, Serpent Mound gets entirely cloaked by fallen leaves.  Interestingly, the original mounds were never really meant to be seen by humans anyway, as the only way to appreciate them fully is from an aerial, divine perspective.

Among the collection’s highlights is David Greenwood’s Fallen Comrade, a stylized P-51 aircraft, its red tail associating it with the Tuskegee Airmen, the celebrated unit of African-American pilots who escorted bombers over Europe during the Second World War, many of whom later settled in Michigan.  David Barr’s Sawpath series references both Michigan’s 19th century logging industry and, interestingly, the Fibonacci sequence, a pattern equally prevalent in both art and nature (such as in the bracts of a pine cone).

Five Needles, 1996-1998 by Michael McGillis. Photo: Alan Newton

 

The forty-foot timbers of Five Needles, certainly the park’s most iconic sculpture (and the first one installed), seem to sprout organically from the earth, and reference the tall ships that once navigated Michigan’s Great Lakes.  There’s even a sculpture by Martyn Puryear (who earlier this year enjoyed a fine retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago).  Puryear’s Untitled 2, so characteristic of his reductive, basic forms, is a conical form of woven wooden boards which subtly pays tribute to the basket weaving tradition of the Woodland Indians.  

Hemmingway Haunts, 2004-2005. Patricia Innis. Photo: Alan Newton

 

One of the Legacy Park’s emphatic missions is art education; admittedly, I tend to be, perhaps unfairly, a curmudgeon on this front, many times having had to grumpily navigate upstream through regional art museums against the interminable surge and din of busloads of schoolchildren (many preoccupied on their I-Phones).   So mark me well when I enthusiastically hail this park as an educator’s dream.  Along the paths are artist-benches, equiped with basic art supplies on hand for children (or anyone, really).  During my visit, a small display of children’s art was on view at the park’s open-air learning center, all produced during a recent field trip.   In several places, it appeared students created modest Goldsworthy-inspired earth art.  Hemmingway Haunts, on permanent view, is actually a collaborative effort by Patricia Innes and local schoolchildren, and, with natural pigments, offers us ghostlike silhouettes representing characters from stories by Ernest Hemmingway, who once frequented the region.

When John Muir, celebrated champion of America’s national parks, famously wrote that everyone “needs beauty as well as bread,” he was specifically referring to the beauty of nature, not necessarily the beauty of art.  But the creators of the Legacy Park manage to seamlessly bring both together.  It’s certainly a world apart from the polished, white cuboid and rectilinear gallery spaces in which we so frequently encounter contemporary art.  The park isn’t highbrow, nor does it aspire to be. The conventional gallery absolutely has its place (and an important one at that), but in the Legacy Park’s inclusive and emphatically hands-on approach to art, this park is a joyous breath of fresh, forest-scented air.

Much more information regarding the Legacy Park can be found on its excellent website, which includes a digital catalog of all works in its collection.

By Jonathan Rinck

Liam Gillick, Visuo Vestibular Conflict, 2016. All work courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. Image by writer.

It’s impossible to consider “What’s What in a Mirror” as separate from the rest of the gallery. Rather than a self-contained show, it is scattered throughout the Hugh Lane: encroaching upon solo exhibitions by Alan Phelan and Jesse Jones, dotted on landings, and tucked around the corner of the gift shop. Jones’ expansive curtain, dragged between gallery spaces at intervals as a part of NO MORE FUN AND GAMES skirts the piece Agent Relativity neatly and dramatically; Perceived Lightness reflects visitors searching the display racks for their name in Irish. To see all of Gillick’s work necessitates seeing everything here, punctuated by the repeated stool, mirror and table arrangement.

Liam Gillick, Perceived Lightness, 2016. All work courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. Image by writer.

 

The modular components of the vanity-type stations recall a few modernist touchstones, ranging from constructivism to IKEA. Whilst loosely echoing the placement of the occasional, ornate fireplaces – presumably leftover from the building’s past life as a private residence – each one of Gillick’s forms retains enough of the coolness of the gallery not to become a domestic intervention. Instead, the work is complicit with its institution; it’s like a gallery reading-room experience, not comfortable or secluded enough to encourage a long stay by those who interact with the work. These thoroughfares between rooms become perceptible as gallery non-places, an opposing, propelling force to this work that encourages visitors to stop, sit down, and use the installation as they please.

In line with the reading-room feel, the repeated design of the desks is markedly decorative, considering its ostensibly simple purpose. Engaging with the work is low-commitment, with the viewer invited to do anything from reading the accompanying publication to checking their phone, or even using them to work – though most interaction is presumably more incidental than gallery hot-desking. The produced text is a montage of song lyrics and snippets of research on mirroring and reflection, interspersed with a story from Japanese folklore about sentimentality and selfishness via a reluctantly donated mirror. Much like the work as a whole, the booklet stakes out a wide perimeter of cultural references that are nonetheless almost ridiculously direct with its subject.

Liam Gillick, Crossmodal Congruency Effects, 2016. All work courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. Image by writer.

 

As a part of the Hugh Lane’s “Artist as Witness” programme, which uses the nationwide marking of the Easter rising centenary as a springboard, “What’s What in a Mirror” is grounded in the placement of the individual amongst these commemorative proceedings and the accompanying institutional clamour. It is literal self-reflection and location in the exhibition process: figurative self-reflection, not so much, although that seems beside the point of this ambiguously interactive work. For what at first appears somewhat contrived – tenuous references to 1916, the literal interpretation of reflection, the social media-friendly hashtag] – once experienced seems to be deliberately complicit with and in fact inherent to the work.

Unless otherwise equipped, sitting at these tables and mirrors is an understated and vague participative experience. You can do something, or nothing, as half-hearted as necessary, and even walking past these proffered rest stops won’t undermine their process. This imprecision is key: any and all active engagement feels awkward, conspicuous, and so in some way inappropriate. The feeling of disconnect in being physically self-focused whilst apparently immersed in gallery politics – maybe doing the supposedly modern, “wrong” type of introspection, yet still acceptable here – makes “What’s What in a Mirror” a tongue-in-cheek manifestation of the many issues of commemoration, grasping for connections across timeframes, individuals and subsequent groupings of peoples.

Liam Gillick, Agent Relativity, 2016. All work courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. Image by writer.

 

More sincere efforts to draw a contemporary audience into historical events, attempting to relate to the individual on a mass scale and locate them in all the machinations of history, society and the institution, are routinely patronising and rote; often giving people basic, active roles in contributing through something like rearrangement or writing. “What’s What in a Mirror” seems to toy with these deficiencies by paradoxically making the engaging viewer the passive body, most likely consumers instead of producers when sitting here. Whilst receiving information from their chosen source, be it the space mirrored from behind, or from somewhere else, any reflection upon this information is more of an afterthought.

In the near future, this work will impinge upon forthcoming temporary exhibitions for “Artist as Witness”. It’s a bridge between these show runs, while still echoing those more permanent fireplaces that seem like the opposing bookend to this project, a type of backward intervention in the gallery. What’s What in a Mirror’s open-ended, literal superficiality leaves the participative process arch and obtuse, where engagement is passing and un-monumental: much like observing milestoned time, and its mathematically significant, retrospective impact.

“What’s What in a Mirror” continues at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, until 25th September.

By Dorothy Hunter

Exhibition view. Photo taken by the author.

In 1985 the city of Austin received the gift of sculptor Charles Umlauf’s residence, studio and 168 sculptures from the artist after his retirement from the faculty at the University of Texas in Austin in 1981. A land-swap agreement with the state provided six acres adjacent to the original property that became home to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum in 1991, a project which Umlauf helped design and install. Although the museum is presently located in an important area of Austin, the quiet isolation of the wooded area, purchased in the 1940’s remains an integral element to the grounds located next to Ziker Park and Barton Springs.

Future plans for the museum include opening the residence and studio to visitors but will take years for the project to be completed. No doubt the project will significantly enhance the museum, there remains an incredible wealth of Umlauf’s art and archives as well as contemporary sculpture from the Austin area and those influenced by Umlauf. Curator Dr. Katie Robinson Edwards has taken note of the fact that Umlauf’s work, steeped in 2,000 years of traditional processes, has obvious significance as a foundation of contemporary sculpture tracing its trajectory through the museum with curated exhibitions and hosting the annual Umlauf Prize exhibition by emerging artists.

Exhibition view. Photo taken by the author.

 

To celebrate the museum’s 25th anniversary this year, Edwards began planning the current exhibition Studio in the Museum: An Interactive Recreation of Charles Umlauf’s Studio soon after her arrival three years ago this September. Through collaborations with set and stage designers including Austin-based Stephanie Busing, Studio in the Museum morphed from an idea of a literal recreation of the studio to the interactive exhibit it is. Included is a timeline filled with images and information dating back to Umlauf’s studies at the Chicago Art Institute and growth in Chicago, commissions through the WPA and his annual summer trips to work at foundries in Italy. For Edwards, the one of the most important aspect of the exhibit is to re-introduce Umlauf to people who thought they knew him and introduce him to the many who have yet to discover him. The biographical details continue to impress Edwards as she looks deeper into the artist’s life and work.

Exhibition view. Photo taken by the author.

 

The gallery includes stations that illuminate Umlauf’s processes from preliminary sketches on a drawing desk and materials to molds and finished objects. The ability for people to physically touch his sculptures was an important part of Umlauf’s dedication of the 168 sculptures. Following this idea, the exhibition features an area that allows visitors to work with modeling clay that is the first stage for creating bronze sculptures. The main section of the gallery includes a major portion of Umlauf’s original studio space with tools, models, molds and works in progress that display a range in ideas and media. To complete the education of visitors, an illustrated video and information explains the lost-wax mold making process and casting of bronze for easy understanding. As though back in class with Umlauf, Studio in the Museum brings together the classroom and lecture with the biographical and personal insight of the artist in an exciting way.

View of the sculpture garden. Photo taken by the author.

 

Studio in the Museum will be on display for twice as long most exhibits, from April 22 until October 16, 2016. Also as part of the celebration and the Umlauf Prize, awarded each year to an MFA student at UT-Austin by an independent juror, the museum will include six additional Umlauf Prize recipients from previous years for an Umlauf Prize alumni show beginning in November. Opening February 27, 2017 will be an exhibition of Umlauf’s sculptures of former student Farah Fawcett, on loan from the Blanton Museum.

By Jake Weigel

Barbie’s evolution style (Collectors edition) © Mattel Inc. La storia di Barbie, qui in uno scatto per la linea Collectors, dal modello Teen Age Fashion Model Barbie Doll (1959) fino alla Hard Rock Cafe #2 Barbie. (2004)

I was recently asked to write about an exhibition here in London entitled ‘The Science of Imaginary Solutions’ at a gallery called Breese Little.[1] Central to the work on show was the way that object-led narratives are malleable, prone to the changing modes of thinking across multiple disciplines from science to philosophy, archelogy to sociology and so on. We recognise the power of objects to act as both placeholders and objects in themselves, and the myriad ways in which we can ‘read’ them and extrapolate upon different ideas and conceptions of the world.

The Science of Imaginary Solutions – Breese Little – Installation View 17 – June 2016 Left to Right Alexandre da Cunha, Stephen Thompson, Barry

 

As an example, (also discussed briefly in my article for thisistomorrow), [2]  consider the series of photographic images by Stephen Thompson entitled ‘Antiquities in Britain.’ These images, dating back to 1872, formed part of a portfolio that meticulously documented objects held in the British Museum. These included helmets, artisanal glass, earthenware and shoes among other things, many of which were found at the bottom of the River Thames. The assorted objects speak to combined histories of trade, migration and cultural ethnography, while also revealing something about both London as a city and the wider United Kingdom (as well as the foreign lands from which many of these pieces originally came). At the same time, the photographs themselves, their framing and the documentary/museum contexts in which they were made speak to changing attitudes to the archive, a certain kind of reverence for the past and the specific Victorian ‘gaze’ through which they were taken.

The Science of Imaginary Solutions – Breese Little – Installation View 18 – June 2016 Left to Right Alexandre da Cunha, Stephen Thompson, Yayoi

 

In short, a simple photograph taken in 1872 of a Flemish drinking glass dated between the 16th and 17th Century contains an almost dizzying spectrum of perspectives and signs. At base however, there is arguably a fundamental duality at play between the object as it was (i.e.: the object in its own context) and the object as it could be (which we could broadly interpret as including the various different considerations attached to it beyond itself). When talking about antiquities or other items which one might readily associate with a museum context, this seems fairly innocuous. What happens however when we take an object that is generally perceived as being much more contemporary and straight forward, and then introduce a host of modern contextual baggage to it as well?

Barbie Millicent Roberts© Mattel Inc. Teen Age Fashion Model Barbie Doll nella riedizione del 2009 per la linea Collectors

 

In Bologna right now, a unique example of this baseline duality is currently being explored at Palazzo Albergati. Entitled Barbie. The Icon, the exhibition is a seven section behemoth dedicated to the children’s doll first released in 1959.[3] The proceedings are every bit the garish extravaganza one might anticipate.  Collections of the doll in various guises, outfits and models stand proudly in brightly lit glass vitrines, while neon pink wall texts trace the development of the doll from its reasonably humble (although interestingly, always rather ambitious beginnings) through to its present status as one of the most enduring and recognisable children’s brands (and indeed, commercial brands) of all time.

Barbie, modello Black
1980 © Mattel Inc. Per la prima volta nel 1980 Barbie diventa nera, Black Barbie, con un trucco raffinatissimo, occhi castani e un’acconciatura riccia

 

What is noticeable about the exhibition is the way the organisers have sought to frame the character of the doll throughout the course of the latter half of the 20th century and into the new millennium. While much emphasis is placed on the physical development of the doll, in particular its face and predominantly its fashion, arguably more significant is the timeline running through the entire show which ties the development of the doll with significant moments like the assassination of JFK and the attacks on 9/11. In doing so, an agenda begins to emerge, linking the character to emerging social movements towards equality and changing social attitudes. In 1965, as America became fascinated by the space race, Barbie was released with full astronaut’s uniform, a mere two years after Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. In 1998, Barbie was released with her very own Nascar uniform, a full ten years prior to Danica Patrick’s Indy Japan 300 win in 2008. Subtler but no less significant variations also appeared in the character’s day-to-day wardrobe and accessories, with a marked emphasis on occupational and business attire (the word ‘busy’ is prominently used several times to differentiate between models and outfits).

Barbie as Marilyn 1997 © Mattel Inc.

 

Perhaps amusingly there is very much a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ effect at play. For every new business suit, there is a new member of ‘Barbie’s’ extended family and entourage who is produced to look purposefully mousey and ‘girl-next-door’ so as not to overshadow the main character. For every new skin tone produced there is a cringe-worthy example of cultural appropriation, from ‘Amazon Barbie’ to ‘Aztec Queen Barbie,’ and the less said about the line produced to portray nationalities the better (‘Polish,’ ‘Norwegian,’ ‘Swedish’ and ‘Irish Barbie’ all look alarmingly similar, and my partner wryly suggested that by those standards, a Barbie from her native Romania would have been largely redundant.)

What is clear here is that intentionally or not, the dolls on display in Bologna reveal very much the base duality that I discussed in relation to ‘The Science of Imaginary Solutions.’ These objects both reflect the world around them and the views inherent in the society for which they are produced, and speak to the aspirational notions existing in the ether; the unrealised potential and unspoken rituals we encounter every day. While the exhibition makes much of the intentional side of this paradigm, arguably it is what is not discussed which makes the collection interesting to look at, such as the problematic cultural issues and the warm embrace of neoliberal economics. Even the idea of ‘accessorising’ as a woefully shallow and commercially manipulative activity was practically birthed and very much legitimised by a simple child’s toy such as this one (something which is uncomfortably close to the big-money art world for some people’s comfort).

Ruth Handler e il marito Elliott © Mattel Inc. Ruth e Elliot Handler con una Barbie modello Bubblecut del 1962. Come Barbie, anche Ruth sfoggia per l’occasione una nuova acconciatura: un caschetto con cotonatura e frangia

 

A highly commercial brand attached to some questionably notions of gender and society might be enough to make someone bulk, but there is a value here that may be lost on some people. From the increasingly ethnically diverse presentations and the subtle politics of the dolls wardrobe, to the celebration of vacuous celebrity movie culture and the references to noted fashion designers and contemporary art figures like Warhol, these objects are cultural and social placeholders worthy of consideration.

The exact extent to which their creators realised this of course, is very much open to debate.

The Science of Imaginary Solutions is currently showing at Breese Little in London until September 17. Barbie. The Icon is showing at Palazzo Albergati in Bologna until October 2.

By Will Gresson

[1] http://www.breeselittle.com/current-sois/4592470459

[2] http://thisistomorrow.info/articles/the-science-of-imaginary-solutions

[3] http://www.palazzoalbergati.com/mostra-barbie-bologna/

Rockaway! featuring site-specific installation by Katharina Grosse. Image courtesy the artist and MoMA PS1. Photo by Pablo Enriquez.

Katharina Grosse’s red bolts of color on white transform an aquatic building hit by Hurricane Sandy into a new art destination on the Rockaway Beach front at Fort Tilden. Grosse’s uses of color “break all the rules” and literally create a new dimension, turning an old ruin into  a dynamic, color-coded space that interacts with people, sky, grasses, sand, and ocean.  People literally danced in, on, and around Grosse’s new art object as deejays added to the festive mood.  The beach has been converted from a sleepy hideaway without lifeguards near an unused U. S. Army coast artillery post into one filled with bikers, beachgoers, and families. The untitled art is on view through November and is part of the Rockaway! National Parks Service and MoMA PS1 hurricane recovery effort for the Rockaway Peninsula.

Here’s my exclusive interview with Grosse, followed by more on Grosse, more on PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach’s efforts to restore the Rockaways, and directions to Fort Tilden:

Jan Castro: What is your theory of color and how is it evolving?

Katharina Grosse: I do not have a color theory and don’t work from theory. I realized at some point that color is my main interest.

Rockaway! featuring site-specific installation by Katharina Grosse. Image courtesy the artist and MoMA PS1. Photo by Pablo Enriquez.

 

Castro: Could you discuss the differences between your initial idea for your red and white Rockaway beach house project and the finished work?

Grosse: The Rockaway project was offered to me by Klaus Biesenbach. He sent me pictures four months ago of the buildings by the sea. I built models showing three buildings. We decided to focus on one.

Klaus came to the studio [in Berlin] twice. I made tests using three different red tones and used the models to decide the basics. We chose white plus three kinds of red: Pyrrole Red Light, Pyrrole Red, and Primary Magenta. Once I was on site, each day I had to think through the different stages, the four sides of the house, the roof, the inside and outside areas, and the ways the light changes all the time.

Rockaway! featuring site-specific installation by Katharina Grosse. Image courtesy the artist and MoMA PS1. Photo by Pablo Enriquez.

 

Before I arrived, the Rockaway Parks Conservancy people had to approve the quality of paint, which comes from Golden Paints, the best acrylic paint producer, in New Berlin, New York, and the crew of four worked on technical things, including masking off the area.

Castro: Was weather an element?

Gross: One day we had to stop because it was too windy. After we finished, there was a rainstorm, and we had to blow some sand out of the house.

Castro: You bring out the primary colors of the site itself  –  blue sky, yellow sand, red house, and white for light.

You spoke in a 2015 talk about using color to alter subject-object relationships. Could you elaborate and discuss how color connects the building to its surroundings?

Gross: The color glowed from the roof to the ground, and the functions of roof, ground, and walls changed due to the spaces painted on top of them.

Video from International Sculpture Center on Vimeo.

Castro: You sometimes incorporate earth and dead trees into your work.  Do you use color to make nature more visible?

Grosse:  That could be one reason, also to give something higher emotional compression.

Castro: How did you decide on the palette for your Venice Biennale piece?

Grosse: That was a totally different piece. I wanted it to be multicolored, complicated, and with lots of layers;  the colors made the movements [in the art] traceable.

Castro: Why is color still a new frontier?

Grosse: Color goes directly to your senses. You respond right away somehow. It’s difficult to say what it does. People are still afraid of it. What it does to you is changing all the time. Color has the wonderful ability to transform situations again and again and again.

Castro: Do you have any color heros?

Grosse: A lot: Titian, Rothko, Pililotti Rist. That’s not the only thing important in my work. It could be fresco painting in the Renaissance, a dance performance, film, video, movement…

2014/4006, psychylustro – The Trestle 2014. acrylic on various objects. 450 x 11,500 cm / 177 1/4 x 4,527 1/2 in
Commissioned by the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, USA. © Katharina Grosse und VG Bild-Kunst Bonn; Photo: Steve Weinik

 

Castro: What are you working on next?

Grosse: I plan to spend this year working in my studio. I accepted only one amazing site-related offer for the end of July – painting the entrance hall inside a recreation center building at Washington University, St. Louis, a site used in the third modern Olympic Games, 1904 — the first Olympics held in the Western hemisphere. After the Games, the committee turned the gym over to Washington University to be used as part of the athletics department.

Katharina Grosse I think this is a pine tree, 2013 , installation v iew at Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Staatliche Mu seen zu Berlin  DE acrylic on wall, floor and trees 590 x 1,300 900 cm unique. Photo: Nic Tenwiggenhorn Copyright: © Katharina Grosse und VG Bild -Kunst Bonn, 2014; Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Courtesy of the artist and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin

 

Katharina Grosse has a solo exhibition at Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany that closes October 9th.  Her extensive exhibitions, commissions, and awards between 2013 – 2015 include  The 56th Venice Art Biennale; the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Wiesbaden Museum, Germany;  Philadelphia Mural Arts; Oskar Schlemmer Award, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany; De Pont Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas; Public Art Fund, New York. See also www.KatharinaGrosse.com/ .

Klaus Biesenbach, PS1 Director and MoMA Chief Curator at Large, has led several  art and relief initiatives to restore the Rockaways since Hurricane Sandy devastated the area in 2012.

See http://nypost.com/2016/07/02/this-woman-made-art-from-a-building-hit-by-hurricane-sandy/

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/klaus-biesenbach-moma-ps1-rockaway-queens/?_r=0,

http://hyperallergic.com/308779/paint-flows-over-a-rockaway-ruin-like-hurricane-waves/?ref=featured

Fort Tilden (169 State Road) is accessible by the Q22, Q35, and Q52 buses, the A train/shuttle to 116th St. and weekend ferry service on the American Princess. Street parking is available. Fort Tilden is part of the National Park Service and the Gateway National Recreation Area.

By Jan Garden Castro

Aboriginal agriculture: Bruce Pascoe and Jonathan Jones during the first Symposium Spot Fire 1: Landscape and Language. Photo: Kaldor Public Art Projects

We are the result of our history, there is no doubt about it, but this very fact also raises many questions that don’t meet an easy answer. Should we forget the past to move forward? Or we’d rather keep it present so that it sways our actions? In this context, the idea of art as a way of historical memory has been inarguable during centuries until the irruption of Abstract art deprived critics and public of any reference to past events. At present, artists collaborate with researchers from other disciplines; historians, archaeologists, sociologists -just to mention humanist disciplines- and adopt the role of a project manager who coordinates and merges all this information as part of the final work.

The works of Sydney-based artist Jonathan Jones are a repository of local history and an example of the way how non-figurative art can address history. He is a kind of historian very committed to Aboriginal culture and, rather than write, visually re-creates past events. As an Aboriginal artist from the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nations, Jonathan Jones looks back to his family origins, identifies cultural patterns and tells us their stories using a diversity of media in site-specific artworks. Subtle, he says a lot only with very few elements. Found objects, fluorescent tubes, smooth textures and plain colours give a minimalist appearance to his installations but, unlike Minimalism, they are full of wisdom. If you take the time to observe his installations, you’ll learn about forgotten stories of Gadigal people or real historical events that happened in the very place where you are watching his work. His most recent project, barrangal dyara (skin & bones), takes all these elements to a full extent, let’s see how.

Artist Jonathan Jones holding one of the 15,000 ceramic aboriginal shields that will outline the lost Garden palace in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Photo: Steven Siewert.

 

In 2014, Jonathan Jones won a competition for a temporary site-specific art project that suggested a new view on a particular spot in Sydney. This call was launched by Kaldor Public Art Projects, a not-for-profit organisation lead by art philanthropist John Kaldor, who is known for bringing to Sydney cutting-edge artists for the last 45 years. His very first commission in 1969, Christo & Jean Claude’s Wrapped Coast, has become one of the most iconic Land Art works ever. But don’t digress from the artist’s story as the account of Kaldor’s projects and collection deserves a separate post.

The announcement of Jones’ proposal to be materialised in the following 2 years came with no little mystery. It was said that his project had to do with the Garden Palace, a building that once stood at the Royal Botanic Garden holding an impressive collection of Aboriginal art and utensils. Built for the International Exhibition of 1879, during 3 years it also held several cultural and scientific institutions with their archives and collections. In 1882, a massive fire destroyed the edifice and caused an incalculable cultural loss both for Aboriginal history and for the building of the Australian nation. The initial idea of reviewing the importance of this loss and transmitting it to the public in a contemporary language has become the most ambitious project that both the artist and Kaldor have ever undertaken. Guided by an Aboriginal Advisory Board, the outcome is a multidisciplinary artwork with strong sculptural and sound elements as well as a series of events. The invigilators also play a major role as chroniclers of the lost treasures of the Garden Palace in the same way as the oral tradition in Aboriginal culture keeps their history alive generation after generation.

Jonathan Jones in conversation with Uncle Charles “Chicka” Madden. Photo: Kaldor Public Art Projects

 

But the public display of barrangal dyara (skin & bones) started months before this significant intervention that opens in September. In collaboration with several cultural institutions of Sydney, the artist has organised 3 series of conferences in which experts, scholars and Aboriginal elders have addressed very different aspects of the history of the Palace Garden. Every symposium has connected the social and cultural context around the short life of the building and its ethnographical collection with a contemporary view of the cultural landscape of Sydney. In some way, Jones has conducted the historical research in public and has offered us an excellent opportunity to learn about that part of the artistic process when the artist becomes a historian and distills the information, the knowledge, the tradition and the present visual art practices.

barrangal dyara (skin & bones) will be open from 17 September to 3 October 2016 at the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.

You can listen to the Symposia here

By Paula Llull

Laura Moore, One Man’s Junk (installation photo by Paul Cimoroni)

I want to talk a bit about context – specifically, what sculpture can do to our experiences and expectations of public and private spaces. It’s all about shape-shifting.

I’m drawn back to this because of an exhibition recently opened at the Maclaren Art Centre in the city of Barrie, Ontario, just north of Toronto. Laura Moore’s One Man’s Junk is a seemingly simple and understated installation: essentially a wooden shipping pallet carefully stacked with a number of carved limestone sculptures – 1:1 scale – of old cathode-ray tube computer monitors. The contextual part of this has to do with the work’s placement in a small, interior courtyard at the gallery that is shared with an adjacent café. There are plants in concrete containers, and a few tables and chairs. Moore’s work sits off to one side atop a concrete slab.

Laura Moore, One Man’s Junk (installation photo by Paul Cimoroni)

 

It would be all-too-easy to call One Man’s Junk “discreet” based on nothing more than its small size and its location within this public/private space, but in reality it is anything but. The best metaphor here might be that of a black hole: The presence of Moore’s tidy accumulation of hand-carved limestone works in fact radically distorts and reshapes this space at multiple levels including (but in no way limited to) how abandoned technologies continue to exert a tight socio-economic grip upon us. Whether, say, dumped into the corner of a little-used space, or dumped (in a much more massive, industrial-scale way) onto another part of the world, out-of-sight-out-of-mind is a fiction. An illusion. And a socially, culturally and (of course) economically pricey one at that, one that might end up costing us our home.

I mention Laura Moore’s interventional installation at the McLaren (it’s up until mid-October) by way of brokering an evocation of two important sites in Canada where the sculptural interceded into rather set and understood spatial contexts and did its shape-shifting thing. They’re both all but gone, now – well, sort of. One was urban, the other rural.

Peter von Tiesenhausen, ‘the land is the canvas,’ 2006 (detail, photo by the artist)

 

The latter was called The Tree Museum and was situated about two hours drive north of Toronto near the town of Gravenhurst, and at the end of a winding, rutted mile-long dirt road. Founded in 1997, it was curated by artists EJ Lightman and Anne O’Callaghan, and over the course of its fourteen-year tenure, 80 artists used the museum acreage (320 of them to be exact, owned by a Toronto private school) to create site-specific and largely temporary installations. Now, this isn’t wild, untrammeled nature we’re talking about here; this is rugged, rocky land (part of the Canadian Shield) with thin soil and numerous bogs, and it was entirely logged-out a hundred years ago, covered now with second-growth forest and abutted by a growing number of nearby cottages.  Working with the fundamental guiding principal of “we tread lightly upon the land,” Lightman and O’Callaghan included work by environmentally-based artists like Peter von Tiesenhausen, whose ‘the land is the canvas’ from 2006 comprised eye-like shapes he incised into the bark of over 1,000 trees on the property using only his thumbnail. It was an extension of ongoing work he had done on his own rural property in Alberta, and which he successfully used to legally block oil and gas exploration upon it.

See? Context really can change everything.

Tim Whiten, Danse (detail, photo by EJ Lightman).

 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, The Toronto Sculpture Garden was about as urban as you could get, located on a tiny parcel of land (80’ x 100’ in size) in downtown Toronto that had once been a parking lot. Opened in 1981 as a joint venture between the city of Toronto (which owns the property) and a foundation created by the family of benefactor Louis L. Odetts (which funded and administered exhibitions), it played host to a couple of exhibitions each year that addressed the contexts of this place.

And they were myriad. In 1996, for instance, Liz Magor built a small log cabin on site and landscaped trees and bushes around it for her Messenger. A year later, James Carl installed a gently arcing line of nine pop machines emblazoned with an image of Niagara Falls upon them (mirroring the artificial waterfall that was part of this site) for his Fountain. In 2003 Charles Goldman’s Infinitely Intersecting Orbs comprised a gridded playground of fifteen functional (albeit, slightly modified) tetherball poles across the lawn, and before that Micah Lexier installed his time-based The End and the Beginning October 10, 2001 to April 2002, a brick wall that rose incrementally over a period of fifteen weeks (402 bricks laid each week), completed fifteen weeks before the show itself ended. Shape shifting in the most literal sense.

Both The Tree Museum and The Toronto Sculpture Garden are now all but gone. The Toronto Sculpture Garden ceased its exhibition programming in 2014, though it has been employed since then as a venue that has been a part of the annual Nuit Blanche events held in Toronto since 2006. Shape-shifting remains a viable possibility here; the property itself remains in the hands of the City of Toronto.  Further north, the Tree Museum ceased formal operations in 2012, though many of the works there remain on site. The temporary scarring of von Tiesenhausen’s mark-making has long since healed over, but a work like Tim Whiten’s Danse, skeletal figures sand-blasted into a rocky outcrop of Canadian Shield, will endure far longer and so maintain its context-shifting role amidst whatever the changing fortunes of this property might entail – at least for awhile, anyway.

Gone, but by no means forgotten. Both sites – and, yes, even venues like the small interior courtyard of the Maclaren Art Centre – underscore sculpture’s radically transformative ability to switch the channel, to alter the proverbial course, to rework context…to shape-shift. More than any other medium, I would suggest, the very thingness of the sculptural can upend, even subvert, the narrow conventions and expectations of place, can suggest something else – something other. Richard Serra’s now destroyed Tilted Arc may have pissed off a lot of office workers forced to confront it every day, but it did make them acutely aware of the role of context and what a physical space actually meant to them. And Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty may be situated in such an isolated location that few people actually ever experience it first-hand, but it can be seen from space, and images of this almost otherworldly structure meaningfully play into our fundamental understanding of place.

Sculpture’s otherness matters, and that’s become even more important as this place – our very planet – is being deformed, perhaps beyond all recognition, by our rapacious quest for even more.

By Gil McElroy

Jaume Plensa (Spanish, born 1955), Paula. Bronze, 2013. 276 x 38 5/8 x 100 1/2 in. (701 x 98 x 255 cm) © Jaume Plensa, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Image courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art. Photo by Andrew Weber.

When he was a child, Spanish-born Juame Plensa sometimes furtively hid inside his family’s upright piano.  There, when his father would sit down to play, the sound of the music momentarily became something palpable as the physical vibrations of each note passed through Plensa’s body.  The experience was to have a profound effect on much of his subsequent public art, through which Plensa has always sought to give tangible shape to the ephemeral and the numinous. 

Through November 6, Plensa’s exhibition Human Landscape comes to Ohio’s Toledo Art Museum and offers an engaging mix of outdoor sculptural ensembles tactfully placed throughout the museum’s thirty-six acre campus.  These are augmented with an indoor exhibition of his work, and the gallery space where visitors typically find the museum’s Eighteenth-Century French Rococo paintings now plays host to a varied and multimedia assortment of Plensa’s sculptures, drawings, and etchings.

Spanish artist Jaume Plensa stands inside his installation Silent Rain (2003)

 

This exhibition is truly immersive.  Many of Plensa’s works invite viewer interaction, such as Silent Rain, in which there hangs suspended several curtains of texts by selected poets (Shakespeare, Goethe, and Baudelaire, to name a few).  As visitors pass through the texts, they set the metallic letters into motion, which create a chime-like sound.  The work was inspired by childhood memories of the bead-curtains in the entrances of small Barcelona grocery shops, which helped keep bugs away.  Poetry has a similarly protective function, “keeping the flies away,” Plensa tells an audience during the artist’s talk which launched the show.  Spoken words are transient, ceasing to exist the moment they form; Silent Rain gives poetry substance, sound, and permanence.

Jaume Plensa (Spanish, born 1955), Thoughts (detail). Stainless steel and stone, 2013. 122 x 79 x 106 in. (310 x 200 x 270 cm) © Jaume Plensa, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Image courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art. Photo by Andrew Weber.

 

Language is also the literal substance of most of this exhibition’s outdoor public sculpture arrangements (though some also evoke music, itself a kind of language).  Plensa creates large, hollow forms out of letters from selected world alphabets, each chosen mostly for its aesthetic qualities.  The mingling of these alphabets which span across place and time (he uses characters from both ancient and modern languages) serves as an eloquent metaphor for cross-cultural dialogue.  Some of his forms, such as the crouching bodies in The Soul of Words I and II and Spiegel seem to be engaging in conversation.  If we could climb inside these hollow shells and look out (like the meditative seated figure in the center of Plensa’s spherical Self Portrait seems to be doing), we could see through the letters. Plensa’s subtle point is that we experience the world through language.

Jaume Plensa (Spanish, born 1955), Paula. Bronze, 2013. 276 x 38 5/8 x 100 1/2 in. (701 x 98 x 255 cm) © Jaume Plensa, courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York. Image courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art. Photo by Andrew Weber.

 

There’s a democratic appeal in much of Plensa’s art.  His monumental Dream, for example, sought to give beauty to an abused patch of earth in a blue-collar coal-mining community in England, and Plensa’s iconic Crown Fountain in Millennium Park gave Chicagoans of all social and economic stripes playful space for relaxation during hot summer days.  While the works in Human Landscape are smaller in scale by comparison (with the exception, perhaps, of the commanding, elongated Paula, which stands near the entrance to the TMA, looking very much like a colossal head from Easter Island), they still possess the democratic character of his most significant installations; some ensembles are intentionally placed conspicuously close to Toledo’s Monroe Street sidewalks, literally making them accessible to everyone. So while his art is hardly feisty activist art, it seems to leave in its wake gentle ripples that subtly change society for the better, as good art always will.

By Jonathan Rinck

Dutchess County Estate – Main House site and massing concept study. Acrylic, cast resin, polished brass and charred pine. 24 in x 24 in x 6 in.

There is a shared dream of architecture. A wish that we have, both for architecture, and that we desire to carry out through architecture. In this dream we reshape the world around us like powerful wizards, holding out our hands in front of our bodies and, with mere gestures, cause the landscape to be moved and shaped around us. Rock rises from within the earth, dimples form burning brilliant blisters of crystal and glass into steel and sand, wood grows instantaneous into the deep burnished hues of old-growth, as if we command not only space but time itself.

Much of this dream, we have accomplished. Not us, but humanity— the collective us. Architecture, from its most basic brick baking and basket weaving roots, has accomplished incredible feats. We live within these accomplishments, we gawk at them from inside and outside. We call them buildings— a work derived from the most basic human activity of building. This is what we, humans, do. But again, not us. This is what architects do, commanding the symphonic orchestra of supply chains, material engineering, and construction labor.

Installation shot of Case Work: Studies in Form, Space, & Construction by Brad Cloepfil/Allied Works Architecture at the Denver Art Museum, 2016. Photo by Stephan Alessi.

 

The artistry of this human activity is on full display at Case Work: Studies in Form, Space & Construction at the Portland Museum of Art. The exhibition displays the models, sketches, and experimental materials samples of Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture, a Portland and New York based architecture practice responsible for some magnificent works of contemporary architecture.

But it is not just the finished buildings that are beautiful, as the exhibition shows. The intricate models, the minimal sketches, and the fantastical materials samples made as part of the architectural design process combine to create a sense that architecture is an intricate assemblage of disciplines, harnessing technological skills that border on the magical. The materials samples are arranged in a series of cases and displays called “tool boxes,” but are more akin to jewelry cases. In each example, small bits of material and model show how the architectural practice experiments with combining metals, concrete, structure, absence, light, and opacity— until the right combinations and balances are found that can then be incorporated into the building design. It is impossible to look at these models and samples without a sense of awe, at how seemingly pedestrian materials like paper, concrete, and copper pipe can be converted into gorgeous ingots of sparkling, organic beauty. Compressed metals, carefully chosen concrete aggregate fills, and rough hewn, reclaimed wood glisten under the exhibition lights in a way that would not be out of place in a natural history museum’s collection of rare amethyst, crocoite, and twinned pyrite.

Conceptual study for the National Music Centre, 2009. Modeling concrete, salvaged brass instruments, oak base. 7 in x 6 in x 4.5 in

 

These luminous, gem-like qualities of the architectural models are also what gives me pause. Architecture makes sculptural material into precious commodities. Architecture may have begun among the reeds and clay of the river bank, but now it sources its materials from remote quarries, premium fabricators, and dwindling caches of reclaimed wood from forests that no longer exist. Architecture, while a distinctly human activity, is also the province of the rich and powerful. The projects that Allied Works Architecture builds bares this out— expansive country estates, premium design firm headquarters, and even the wings of art museums. An art museum is a certain sense of “public,” certainly. And yet, it is a different sort of public than housing projects, train stations, and public schools. This is a top-down public, just as architecture is a top-down art, shaping the cities that we live in with economic power beyond our reach. A sculpted, louvered light screen hanging above an art gallery might as well be made from gold leaf, in the sense that the average artist would have just as unlikely a chance to every touch and sculpt such a work themselves.

Conceptual study for the Wisconsin Art Preserve, 2010. Wood, Prismacolor pencils, plaster and porcelain. 21 in x 28 in x 3 in.

 

These social truths do not make the work any less beautiful and magnificent in craftspersonship, but even the most democratic charcoal and paper sketches of the exhibition remain trapped between large panes of archival quality sheet glass. Architecture is, today, a fantastic and mystical art of the inaccessible, an occult power that reveals as much about our material world, as our world’s materials.

By Adam Rothstein

Over My Dead Body, 1988. Inkjet on paper. 204 x 304. © Courtesy of the artist.

I first encountered Mona Hatoum’s work in Berlin in 2010 when she was awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize by the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts). Her large sculptural works with their mix of both delicate and industrial materials was intriguing, and the underlying tension which is often so central to her practice fascinated me. Two years later I was fortunate enough to see her survey “You Are Still Here” at Arter – Space for Art in Istanbul. [1] Here Hatoum’s dense and poetically loaded works were an engaging and perhaps pointed contrast to the largely commercial surroundings on Istiklal Caddesi, the pedestrian avenue visited by as many as three million people during weekends in the popular Turkish city.

Light Sentence 1992. Galvanised wire mesh lockers, electric motor and light bulb. 198 x 185 x 490. Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris: Mnam-CCI / Dist RMN-GP. Photo: Philippe Migeat. © Mona Hatoum

 

As I walk through her retrospective at Tate Modern in London, I recognise a number of works from these two previous exhibitions. The familiar hallmarks in terms of both materials and thematic concerns are all here, however in this setting perhaps it’s the artist’s personal background that most obviously comes most to the fore. Hatoum was born to a Palestinian family in Beirut in 1952, and in 1975 she settled in London as the Civil War in Lebanon broke out. This geographic mix feels potently present at Tate Modern, which addresses conflicts in the Middle East as well as British political issues, both foreign and domestic. Distance and pull, gender and race, Hatoum’s work shies away from none of these topics, yet even the most understated documentary pieces reveal a keen awareness with the contemporary art historical concerns of their day.

Typically, Tate Modern retrospectives tend to work on a chronological basis, mitigating the curation somehow into a developmental narrative. This can be instructive but occasionally renders some sections of the exhibitions uneven for the sake of being ‘complete.’ Here however, the curators have instead developed the exhibition as a series of juxtapositions that aim to better explore Hatoum’s thematic concerns and creative strategies. The result is a retrospective that seems less indebted to nostalgia and reverence and succeeds in framing the artist’s work as it should be viewed – relevant and contemporary in 2016.

Over My Dead Body, 1988. Inkjet on paper. 204 x 304. © Courtesy of the artist.

 

Undoubtedly, her large scale sculptural and installation works are still the most immediately recognisable, encompassing everything from specially designed and fashioned pieces to domestic objects and furniture. Grids and geometric shapes often seem to inform these works such as Hot Spot (2013) or Light Sentence (1992). In the former, a large steel globe is detailed with red neon, the title a reference to spaces of military or civil unrest. By presenting the whole world as burning red light, the suggestion here is clearly that the whole globe is wrought with conflict. As with other works, there is the suggestion of organised chaos, carefully orchestrated disorder.

The latter work is a beautiful room sized installation, containing a three sided structure of wire mesh lockers surrounding a single light bulb. As the light slowly rises and falls in the centre of the room, it casts beautiful, seductive shadows across the walls of the space that seem to loom and melt away with their own particular rhythm. As viewers slowly walk around the outside of the piece, they cast more shadows, vaguely identifiable as people that almost adds a performative element to work.

Perhaps one of the strongest sculptural works in the entire exhibition is +and- (1994-2004), a large circular sandpit with a motor-driven arm that sweeps across the sand, one half drawing lines while the other comes around to erase them. In an abstract sense, these two forces are oppositional, a kind of post-industrial yin and yang. The cyclical nature of the work neatly encapsulates the idea of continuity, creation and destruction, drawing and redrawing figurative ‘lines in the sand.’

Undercurrent (red), 2008. Electrical wires covered in fabric, with light bulbs and dimmer switch, variable dimensions. Photo Stefan Rohner, Courtesy Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. ©Mona Hatoum

 

More explicitly the work also connotes the constant redrawing of borders in the deserts of the Middle East, something which touches on both Hatoum’s personal history but also more significantly addresses the role of the British government in many of the conflicts through their clumsy and self-interested partitioning of the region. It’s difficult not to view this work within the prism of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, where the British Foreign Secretary James Balfour wrote in favour of the establishment of Palestine as a “national home for the Jewish people,” a seismic moment in the development of what we now know as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [2]

Hot Spot III, 2009. Stainless steel, neon tube. Photo: Agostino Osio, Courtesy Fondazione Querini Stampalia. Onlus, Venice. ©Mona Hatoum

 

This conflict is also referenced in Keffieh (1993-9), named for the traditional Arad headscarf that has become synonymous with the Palestinian struggle and here rendered in embroidered human hair. While + and – addressed international borders, here Hatoum is interested in subverting the politics of gender, blurring the lines between the typically masculine connotations of the struggle and the feminine ties to both the materials used and embroidery in general. This is further raised in Twelve Windows (2012-13), a collaborative project between Hatoum and Innash, The Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps (described in the exhibition text as ‘a Lebanese NGO founded in 1969 to provide employment for Palestinian women in refugee camps in Lebanon’).  Here twelve regions are represented through their different designs, organised in a slightly chaotic fashion on steel cables across a small room to highlight the divided and territories they represent.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the exhibition can be found in the smaller documentary pieces which detail Hatoum’s performance work. No less politically oriented than the larger scale works, here the artist’s body itself became a material that bore the weight of the conflicts they alluded to. The two starkest examples of this are Under Seige (1982) and The Negotiating Table (1983). In the former, the performers body is held in a tall confined space covered in clay. As she tries to stand she continually falls down, leaving traces across the glass, while revolutionary songs in different languages play alongside news reports and statements all tied to the conflict in Palestine. The work is an expression of living in ‘a constant state of siege,’ a notion which appars with even greater significance in her later work. [3] In The Negotiating Table the artist lies on a table, wrapped in plastic and covered in blood, her face hidden with surgical gauze. A sacrificial lamb on the altar of global political struggle, the work is sound tracked by the voices of Western leaders discussing the ongoing crisis in that part of the Middle East. (In this video, a brief re-enactment can be seen from 1:26 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGMw5WNugUI).

Homebound, 2000. Kitchen utensils, furniture, electrical wire, light bulbs, dimmer unit, amplifier and two speakers. Dimensions variable. Courtesy Rennie Collection, Vancouver. © Mona Hatoum

 

From her earliest works until the most recent commissions, there is a consistent focus in Hatoum’s oeuvre that perhaps predictably reminds me of Emily Jacir’s exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery last year. [4] [5] Certainly the two artists are linked by a shared narrative as Palestinian women in exile, but their work is also imbued with the starling ability to reflect not only the struggle but the melancholy of their circumstances, and the complex depth of the conflicts they reference. Hatoum’s works here are notable for the way they illuminate the universality and circularity that is so evident in the ongoing tensions in the Middle East, something which we are clearly still a long way from negotiating with any nuance and finality in the West.

By Will Gresson

[1] http://www.arter.org.tr/W3/?iExhibitionId=38

[2] http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the%20balfour%20declaration.aspx

[3] http://www.reactfeminism.org/entry.php?l=lb&id=65&e=t

[4] http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/first-uk-survey-of-artist-emily-jacir-on-show-at-the-whitechapel-gallery-from-30-september-2015/

[5] http://eyecontactsite.com/2015/12/emily-jacir-in-london

Martin Puryear, Vessel, 1997–2002, eastern white pine, mesh, and tar, Courtesy of the artist. © Martin Puryear, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

On the subject of his printmaking, Martin Puryear told Art 21 that he tries to “make work that’s about the idea in the sculpture without making a picture of the sculpture.” It’s an aspiration that resonates throughout his exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum: the first major traveling museum exhibition that positions his sculpture in direct relationship with his printmaking, as well as his drawings and drawing process.

Martin Puryear, Jug, 2001, hard and soft ground etching with drypoint on Japanese paper, laid down on paper (chine collé), Smithsonian American Art Museum. © 2001, Paulson Bott Press.

 

It’s of little surprise that a sculptor draws and plans. What is, perhaps, of surprise within this exhibition is the scope of the drawing and printmaking in the exhibition: of the 72 works on display, only 14 of the pieces are sculpture. Some of the drawings date back to Puryear’s time in the Peace Corps, from 1964–1966 And while many of the early prints feel as if completed by a different hand, they possess the same DNA of those familiar forms that repeat throughout his career: the head, the vessel, the quadruped, the circle.

Puryear’s work has never seemed in step with contemporary trends. There is a timelessness to his work in much the way the sculpture of Brancusi and Giacometti evoked the early primal forms of pre-historic cultures. In fact, the relationship to Brancusi is certainly more direct, with Puryear’s repeated use of the head. At times, he buries the face in the floor: whether as a white bronze, or repurposed into “Vessel,” a wire-frame construction of dense white pine, that stands seven feet tall and stretches 15 feet in length. Much like the head can be filled with knowledge, the “Vessel,” in this instance, is filled with a wire-mesh ampersand, as if suggesting what next to fill the vessel with.

“Drawing for Untitled” (1999) .

 

While the archaic craft of many of the sculptural works are never so slick as to deny the nature of the hands that made them, from a distance there is at least a suggestion of the machined modernity from the time period of their creation. The drawings, and in some respects his return to printmaking after a 30-year hiatus, possess more of the deliberate immediacy and liberty of a petroglyph. The lines a little looser, at times less refined. The mark at times clouded by the presence of fingerprints smudging and marring the surface. If printing (or drawing) is about getting to the idea, it’s an idea he has been meditating on for well over 25 years. The bean-like form—whether called “vessel,” or “head,” or “untitled”—has been emerging on paper in various states and stages dating back to 1990. Arguably, as the exhibition would suggest, it goes back further: to the young man in the Peace Corps drawing portraits of villagers in 1966.

By John Anderson

Linda Howard “Star Center” 8.5 H x 24’ W x 12 ‘ D Aluminum.

In a rather unexpected setting, nestled in the Chattanooga valley surrounded by mountains, lies Montague Park, once home to city baseball fields, the 33-acre site sat abandoned as if it was beckoning to be adorned with something spectacular. On April 8, 2016 that ‘something spectacular’ arrived in the form of Sculpture Fields at Montague Park (SFMP).

Claus Moor “H-1540” 12’ h x 4’ w x 5’ D Corten. 

 

On a cool and windy night, a community of art supporters, artists and art enthusiasts gathered to celebrate the vision of John and Pamela Henry which began in 2009 as a result of a collection of realities that surfaced over the prior decade in Chattanooga. The Grand Opening celebration began with a keynote address by Tony Jones, president of the Kansas City Art Institute. Mr. Jones congratulated the Henry’s
for “following in the tradition of other parks in America that have been extraordinary successful” and “that have had an incredible economic impact.”

The day was filled with the ultimate desire of what one hopes a sculpture park would bring to a community. I watched visitors explore yoga and tai jai poses amongst the sculptures, families walking together and learning about each sculpture, often interacting with the artists themselves, while a cool breeze wafted smooth jazz music, adding an audial element to the already soothing artistic experience. The day turned into night and the literally came alive in the form of an iron pour. “Cross Pollination” by artist Allen Peterson lit up the sky. Visitors endured the cold temperatures fascinated by the visual of hot iron being poured into mold creating red-hot bumble bees whirling around tall stemmed flowers appearing to pollinate each one.

Mark diSuvero “Swizzle” 23’ H Steel.

 

The celebration proved that there is no limit to the freedom to explore life through art and how it enriches the very being of humanity.

For me, there was one more realization that impacted me personally on this day…that an Internationally renowned sculptor recognized the struggle of a growing arts community and committed to make such a monumental difference in the community in which he resides.

John Henry has surely watched it happen many times throughout his 50+year career. But when it happens in your hometown it takes a conscious community minded leader to shepherd such a lofty vision into a reality. “In the last 15 years a sizable number of sculptors have relocated to Chattanooga because of the conducive welcoming attitudes and creative resources found here.” Henry continues, “Chattanooga is demonstrating a strong acceptance and considerable support for the establishment of an arts community. There are arts organizations, groups, collectives, forming rapidly, and the arts industry in Chattanooga is becoming a formidable economic social and political force within the city and the region. The missing ingredient is sustainability, which can only be achieved by establishing a critical mass of elements important enough to draw arts enthusiasts to the city and produce the kind of environment where a market for the art of the region can emerge.”

Lyman Kipp “Hugo” 10’ h x 12’ w x 10’ d.

 

As a testimony to SFMP’s contribution to enrich the city overall and integrate art into everyday life in Chattanooga, SFMP is a yoga, dog, kite and picnic friendly park. Future plans are to open the park to additional cultural experiences as well as a place to celebrate life’s events, such as weddings, in an art-filled atmosphere.

Currently there are 28 works are positioned throughout Phase I of the park.
Included are works by Verina Baxter, Carl Billingsley, John Clement, Jim Collins, Roger Colombik, Mark diSuvero, John Henry, Linda Howard, Hanna Jubran, Lyman Kipp, Gary Kulak, Peter Lundberg. Jane Manus, Claus Moor, Jesús Moroles, Netje, Jan Meyer-Rogge, Doug Schatz, George Schroeder and John Petrey. You can download Otocast to view the sculptures and listen to the artists speak about their work.

The park is open from dawn to dusk daily and is located on Polk Street between Main and 23rd Streets.

By Peggy Petrey

Square the Circle, 2015–16. Fabric and wood. Installation view of site-conditioned work in Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2016. © 2016 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © 2016 Philipp Scholz Rittermann

Since April 7, the Hirshhorn has been hosting “All The Rules Will Change.” It’s the first Robert Irwin survey outside of California since 1977, and as such only features work made between 1958 and 1970—with exceptions to a couple of installations designed for the exhibition.

The title of the exhibition has several reads. One is a tidy summary of Irwin’s process for art-making: transitioning away from painting to the optical and transformative play of his discs, columns, and later scrims. Another read encapsulates a personal response to looking at his work, and art in general: despite its minimalism, his work is muscular and will force most viewers to change how they see and engage art. 

Such is the case when seeing the Irwin installation, “Square the Circle,” which consists of a 120-foot long scrim bisecting the circular footprint of Gordon Bunschaft’s Hirshhorn Museum. Apart from a doorway in the center of the scrim, the length is uninterrupted. It’s a mass that seems sturdy enough to lean against, and at first glance presents itself as a brilliant visual gimmick: the sweeping curve of the architecture opposite the flat face of the installed scrim. How often are any of us in a 120-foot long space with little interruption to our line of site? That awareness alone can be unsettling, even without prior reference to what the Hirshhorn’s galleries normally look like.

It’s with a second look that “Square the Circle” flexes its muscle. As the eyes adjust to the light of the room, the opaque white face of the scrim dissolves. The translucency reveals the space beyond the scrim, and gives the illusion that it is nothing more than a corner of the gallery painted white: something you can enter: that no scrim exists. Move. Blink. The scrim again appears opaque. The experience is jaw dropping.

But, if allowed a little room for interpretation, the title of the exhibition reads a third way: as a bit of an inside joke. In some ways, for this exhibition, all the rules did change.

Irwin’s proposal for a site-conditioned scrim installation on the plaza (unrealized), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2013

 

Initially, back in 2014, it was reported that the campus of Cuesta College was testing a 12-foot by 40-foot scrim for a 2015 installation at The Hirshhorn. For those unfamiliar with its design, the Hirshhorn looks like a concrete doughnut on stilts, with the galleries positioned above and below an open plaza. In all, 36 scrims would fan around the plaza.  At the time , former public information officer, Glenn Dixon, indicated that it was a stand-alone project. No further exhibition plans had been announced.

That installation never happened.

“Basically [Irwin] wanted to stretch scrim from the coffer spine (on the underside of the building) to the plaza,” noted Al Masino, Director of Exhibitions, Design, and Special Projects at the Hirshhorn Museum. And he wanted to do it with a one-inch by one-inch stretcher that ran the length and height of the scrim. “A lot of people were skeptical that the design would withstand the elements.”

Part of the skepticism had to do with the material itself: a thin, translucent fabric that —despite its use in the airline industry—has an appearance similar to a wedding veil.

“The big concern: there are millions walking up and down the National Mall throughout summer,” remarked Evelyn Hankins, Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn. “The exhibition is up from the Cherry Blossom Festival through Labor Day (September 5). The Smithsonian was concerned about the weather: thunderstorms, hurricanes, and what happens if an 80-90 mile wind comes out of nowhere!”

Installation view of Pier II, 1960–61, in Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2016. Artwork © 2016 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York . Photo: Cathy Carver

 

Considering Washington’s fickle weather, it isn’t a leap of imagination to envision the material ripping, stretchers warping or snapping, or the whole apparatus of one or several scrims breaking lose and sailing over the National Mall. The proposal had to be subjected to Smithsonian safety standards: 25 Smithsonian engineers  and specialists looked at documentation provided. They engaged with structural engineers. Anemometers were installed around the plaza and on the roof of the building to get a sense of how the Hirshhorn’s design affected wind speeds. As they learned, roof wind speeds differed from plaza wind speeds, sometimes by as much as 20 MPH, and with no consistency that the roof wind speed would be greater than the plaza wind speed. Sometimes it was just the opposite.

Then there was the scrim installed at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo. Unfortunately, their three-week test didn’t experience nearly the wind speeds that the Hirshhorn was measuring at the museum—which were upwards of 60 MPH.

“In the end I think the things we were skeptical about were not the things that didn’t allow the project to go forward,” Masino declared. Whereas there was initial concern that the scrims might rip, as it turns out, the scrims were more likely to rip apart the plaza’s granite pavers: when hit with 30 MPH winds, the scrims would lift multiple 800-pound pavers out of their moorings. Drilling hundreds of holes into the pavers wasn’t an option either, since it risked the integrity of the membrane that waterproofed collections and galleries beneath the plaza.

After over a year of testing the project was deemed infeasible. “In the end it really wasn’t Irwin’s proposal that wasn’t feasible,” reflected Masino. “It was that we didn’t and couldn’t understand the tendencies of the wind, and attaching [the scrims] to the plaza without potential failure.

Irwin had been working on the exhibition design prior to the conclusion of the feasibility study. However, once they determined the exterior project could not be realized, “Bob changed the whole exhibition design 100-percent,” Masino recalled.  Again: All the rules changed.

Square the Circle, 2015–16. Fabric and wood. Installation view of site-conditioned work in Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2016. © 2016 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Photo © 2016 Philipp Scholz Rittermann

 

The change wasn’t so they could include Square the Circle: that piece Irwin had proposed prior to the termination of the exterior installation. The change reconfigured the entire layout of the rest of the exhibition. Cleverly enough, it was another way to square the circle.

The outer ring of the Hirshhorn is usually broken into several galleries, rhythmically constructed between large and small spaces connected by vestibules. At times, some of the exterior walls are flattened to avoid the weird optical bow that happens when hanging anything rectilinear on a curved wall. Although roomy-enough to hang several enormous paintings by the likes of Clyfford Still or Willem de Kooning, the galleries can still feel intimate.

Irwin’s solution segmented the outer ring with walls that act more like partitions that float away from the building’s exterior and central ring-walls. In essence, they create two passageways through the outer ring. At certain vantage points along the central ring-wall, you can see into individual galleries, like slots in a Kodak slide carousel. No artwork hangs on the outer or central ring-walls. With exception to a series of handheld paintings that sit in vitrines, each large painting sits on its own partition wall, with no other work visible to distract the viewer.

Irwin’s proposal for a site-conditioned scrim installation in the galleries, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2015

 

The intention is for intense focus on only one work of art at a time. However, by accident, you are also looking at a second artwork: the layout of the gallery itself. The one work of art—a painting of dots or stripes from the 1960s—you look at. The other work of art you walk through. “When the installation was up, I thought I was outfoxed by Irwin,” Hankins confessed, “because there was an architectural installation that had a few pieces hung up.”  Thanks to the lighting of the exhibition, and the structure of the space, the exterior and central ring-walls almost melt away from view when observing one of Irwin’s earlier paintings. And a rhythm is established: look at a painting on a big rectangular wall, then move on. Because it is a wall, we’ll involuntarily ignore the wall as art. Then we’ll move on to the next piece, on the next wall, in an orderly fashion. And then the next piece, on the next wall. It’s not how we might normally experience a gallery space: where visitors circle the walls or zig-zagging past work throughout the room. The pace through the Irwin survey is rigid and processional.

Irwin’s career is one of calling the viewers attention to the act of seeing himself see, as was evident when looking at the long scrim piece, “Square the Circle.” WIth the redesign of the exhibition space, Irwin re-focused the audience into the act of seeing themselves see an exhibition.  Maybe with a little liberty we can assume a fourth read of the exhibition title. For viewing this exhibition, all the rules had changed.

By John Anderson

“El Origen” Te regalo la luz de este viaje hacia el centro. Romina Castiñeira Plástico, sal, asfalto, tubos fluorescentes y paisaje sonoro. Medidas aproximadas: 27 x 18 x 4 m. Instalación de sitio específico. Centro Cultural Córdoba, Argentina, 2016.

El Centro Cultural Córdoba presentó el pasado Mayo una muestra altamente conceptual donde la artista visual Romina Castiñeira crea una geografía abstracta, diáfana, envolvente, que se apropia del lugar estimulando posibilidades diversas de desplazamiento para el espectador y poniendo en cuestión la relación entre el adentro y el afuera que determinan los elementos que conforman la instalación. “El Origen” es producto de una invitación que hace el Centro Cultural a la artista para realizar un sitio específico pensado exclusivamente para una arquitectura de gran escala y alta luminosidad, formato ideal para una artista como Castiñeira  que se preocupa por investigar la relación que se establece entre la industria (los materiales), el diseño (espacial) y la arquitectura (el soporte estructural de la obra). Sal, asfalto y plástico son los ejes materiales; iluminación fluorescente y natural así como el sonido ambiente, acompañan a la materia poniéndola en diálogo con el entorno que habita el espectador y cuestionado rol que allí desempeñan. El interés de la artista por la materialidad tiene larga data y trata de pensarla en su vínculo con el concepto de crisis (cambio) que atraviesa a todo ser humano en sus distintas versiones. La materia también

“El Origen”
Te regalo la luz de este viaje hacia el centro. Romina Castiñeira
Plástico, sal, asfalto, tubos fluorescentes y paisaje sonoro.
Medidas aproximadas: 27 x 18 x 4 m. Instalación de sitio específico Centro Cultural Córdoba, Argentina, 2016.

 

tiene su propia crisis,  su propio cambio. Todo el trabajo se desprende de un estudio obsesivo de los elementos con el fin de entender su origen y génesis, principalmente del plástico, material que la fascina. Y en esta búsqueda queda conformado un relato en el espacio el cual intenta, ante todo, comprenderlo. Todo el registro detallado del proceso creativo y los debates internos a la hora de pensar en la puesta en escena, se evidencian en una puesta que seduce por su elegancia, donde pocos recursos ubicados en los lugares correctos impactan con mayor eficacia que la ostentación injustificada: los elementos casi en estado “puro” descansan ocupando un  lugar  estable y pasivo y el espectador se mueve dentro de esa trama donde intervienen -además del plástico, la sal y el asfalto- la reflexión sobre el lugar que ocupa el concepto de belleza, la influencia de la luz -la cual puede, con su sola presencia, alterar la esencia misma de percepción de las cosas-, la elegancia de la geometría, la interacción entre el espacio físico sutil y transparente y el espacio mental que provoca emociones en las personas. Pero es ante todo, la imponencia de la arqiectura como albergue de la instalación, la  puede establecer un vínculo superador entre los elementos. Dice Castiñeira: “Mi obra es una pieza de sitio específico que crea una ilusión espacial y apunta al desdoblamiento del espacio. Pienso en la arquitectura emocional, esa relación entre la arquitectura y la luz que genera texturas emocionales de las que se compone nuestra interacción con el entorno y con nosotros mismos”.

“El Origen” Te regalo la luz de este viaje hacia el centro. Romina Castiñeira, Plástico, sal, asfalto, tubos fluorescentes y paisaje sonoro.
Medidas aproximadas: 27 x 18 x 4 m. Instalación de sitio específico Centro Cultural Córdoba, Argentina, 2016.

 

Lo interdisciplinario es un must en el arte contemporáneo. Romina Castiñeira transita el campo de la fotografía,  la danza, la escenografía, la curaduria y el video y claramente esto se refleja en el ritmo que guarda toda la obra, los vacíos y los llenos equilibrados, tomando posesión del todo con muy poco sin necesitar del horror vacui para destacar la espacialidad sino condensando la información en el punto justo para que los protagonistas de la instalación se relacionen entre ellos y generen el lugar necesario para que el espectador entre y salga, física y emocionalmente.

Maria Carolina Baulo

Photos by Chick Heiney, courtesy of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park

To best vicariously appreciate Mimmo Paladino’s evocative installation Dormienti (Sleepers), poke around the internet and find composer Brian Eno’s electronic score of the same title.  At Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, this trance-inducing music plays on a loop in a large, dark gallery space, creating a moody and surreal soundscape for Paladino’s ambitious installation, in which 32 life-sized abstracted terracotta human forms rest in the fetal position.  It’s as if their inert earthen bodies have yet to experience the spark of life.  Although unmistakably contemporary, this collaborative work seems timeless and universal, as do many of Paladino’s other sculptures on view.  Even Eno’s electronic music, for all its technological modernity, seems evocative of free-rhythm Gregorian chant.

Photos by Chick Heiney, courtesy of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park

 

This retrospective exhibition is quite appropriately called “Present into Past,” and features an impressive array of sculpture spanning twenty years of Paladino’s career.  But also on view, making their debut, are  a dozen new lithographs specially created for and gifted to Meijer Gardens (these abstractly depict the twelve months, and were created in close collaboration with the Garden’s horticultural staff).  In the 1970s and 80s, Paladino was active in the Italian Transavanguarde movement, which sought to restore the human figure and objective forms to contemporary art.   Viewers will detect many and varied influences as Paladino impressively straddles both contemporary art and ancient forms.

Photos by Chick Heiney, courtesy of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park

 

This duality is best seen in an adjunct gallery which features a large ensemble of 71 small bronze sculptures all arranged together on a platform, which visitors are encouraged to walk around.  It’s a single-room retrospective representing sculptural projects from 1987 through 2007.  In these works, many of them maquettes for larger sculptures, we see the human figure in many guises, often fragmented, and rarely complete.  Many seem like excavated objects from the ancient past (which is indeed an influence on much of Paladino’s work).  These forms recall, for example, a votive Cycladic figure, an ancient Corinthian helmet, or the head of some forgotten ancient Egyptian deity.  One figure plays the ancient aulos, a double-pipe reed instrument frequently appearing on Greek vase paintings, a direct reference to classical antiquity.

Photos by Chick Heiney, courtesy of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park

 

Some works from this exhibition can be found outside the park’s primary interior gallery spaces.  Observant visitors who wander into the Garden’s tropical conservatory will find three terracotta crocodiles, also part of the exhibition.  Previously, they’ve been displayed in other venues as part of Paladino’s Dormienti installation, where they wander among the humans.  Here, they furtively hide under tropical underbrush, and seem quite at home among the conservatory’s palm fronds, orchids, and butterflies.  Like his lithographic calendar, this strategic placement is acknowledges Garden’s intentional fusion of sculpture and horticulture.

Present into Past is a fully immersive multi-sensory gallery experience.   In keeping with the aims of the Transavantgarde movement, which rebelled against many of the principals of modernism, Paladino’s work acknowledges the importance of the past, and is infused with a subtly understated spirituality.    His work gently reminds us that there are more eternal things than the pressing here and now.  It summons a cathartic experience akin, in a very small way, to what one might experience while looking up at the stars in the night sky; pressing trivialities, annoyances, and cares dissolve, vanquished by sublime beauty.

Mimmo Paladino: Present into Past runs through August 14.

By Jonathan Rinck

Lauren Frances Adams, “Granny Smith & Wesson” (Detail). Ink, fabric, wooden stool, 2003.

In 2015, there were 372 mass shootings in the United States.  The resultant fatalities represent a mere fraction of the year’s cumulative 13,286 firearm deaths, a number which roughly doubles if suicides are included.  Since 1968, there have been about 1.4 million deaths by firearms in the United States; that’s more than the combined total of all American fatalities from every military conflict in which the United States has taken part since the Revolutionary War. 

These statistics come from a recent BBC profile on American gun violence.  Since the ratio of guns to people in America is exactly one to one, it goes without saying that guns are an intrinsic part of our culture, their presence inextricably written into the Constitution.   Unloaded, a travelling exhibition currently on view at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, is a spirited and politically-charged show which cynically comments on American gun culture.

Mel Chin, Cross for the Unforgiven: 10th Anniversary Multiple (1 of 2), 2012. AK-47 assault rifles (cut and welded), 54 x 54 x 3 in.

 

The exhibition, organized by Susanne Slavick of Carnegie Mellon University, brings together multimedia works by twenty international artists who collectively address the role of guns in the context of suicide, violence, and the “militarization of the private life.”  The topic is serious, but the artists approach it with irony and subtle, if embittered, humor.

Granny Smith & Weston by Lauren Adams, for example, at first glance appears to be an innocuous little footstool, its cushioned seat covered in a traditional cross-stitch pattern.  Close inspection reveals the fabric’s floral pattern to consist of flowers and, idiosyncratically, small handguns.  Similarly, Stephanie Syjuco creates images of handguns and rifles through the traditionally domestic medium of crochet on panel.  Originally intended to gently parody American gun culture, Syjuco’s works, interestingly, are sometimes purchased and admired by gun owners.  Both artists intentionally apply the visual language of traditional American craft, commenting on guns as a firmly embedded presence in America’s heritage.

Lauren Frances Adams, “Granny Smith & Wesson” Ink, fabric, wooden stool, 2003.

 The unmistakable centerpiece of Unloaded is the Cross for the Unforgiven, a visually and conceptually striking sculpture that has, quite deservedly, become something like a symbol for the show.  Assuming the shape of the traditional Maltese Cross (similar to the much more familiar Celtic cross), the work is made from strategically arranged cut and welded AK-47s, the world’s most popular assault weapon. In this sculpture, artist Mel Chin compellingly and evocatively subverts a symbol traditionally associated with forgiveness and redemption.

At times, the UICA’s massive multi-story gallery spaces admittedly seem to overwhelm the comparatively small-scale works in the show.  But Unloaded clearly succeeds in provoking reactions.  In one room, visitors are invited to post comments on the wall.  “Guns are massive amounts of entertainment; you should try them out,” one reads.  “I feel less safe around guns.  Even if you are a good guy,” says another.

This exhibit prods us not to be satisfied with the status quo, and creates space for all parties to acknowledge, at the very least, that there’s no good reason for the United States to statistically be, by an exasperatingly high margin, the most homicidal country in the developed world.

After Grand Rapids, Unloaded is slated to appear at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.  Additional dates and venues for the traveling exhibition can be found here.

By Jonathan Rinck

Frances Star, from the @therealstarkiller series, 2014-ongoing, installation view Emotional Supply Chains at Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2016. Photo: David Bebber

On the face of it, Emotional Supply Chains seems like a reasonably timely project; a group show of work that addresses the way identity is constructed in the digital age, going back as far as the turn of the new millennium and working up until the present day. The title of the exhibition comes from the idea that the self is “fabricated via a supply chain of objects, ideas and experiences,” according to the exhibition text, and seeks to antagonise the tension between the oft touted freedom of digital space, with its alleged multiplicity and fluidity, and the inescapably tangible and more specific realities we face in real life.

The exhibition is divided into three sections, entitled Authenticity and Artifice, The Networked Self and Origins and Renewal. Each teems with significance not only in terms of how we discuss the post-digital world, but also one in which as Boris Groys has suggested (in a recent essay for e-flux Journal #71, again cited in the exhibition text) we are all engaged in some sort of artistic activity. How then do people navigate this particular multiplicity, which appears to manifest itself in an oddly competitive way, a crowded space where everyone is screaming their own name at the top of their lungs, vying for attention and validation from others?

Simon Denny, The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, 2013-15, installation view Emotional Supply Chains at Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2016. Photo: David Bebber

 

New Zealand artist Simon Denny’s work The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom (2013- ) is the first work which greets the viewer, taking up a large portion of the main hall of the downstairs gallery. Referring to the ongoing legal difficulties of German-born (and currently NZ-based) founder of Megaupload and Megavideo, the installation is assembled from a collection of objects collated from a list of items seized by police during a raid on his huge mansion in Auckland in January 2012. Denny’s work here has a kind of dual significance, revealing Dotcom’s rather adolescent tastes (expensive cars, movie memorabilia etc.) that have become synonymous with his public image, as well as touching on issues of copyright and intellectual property rights in the age of the internet. Denny’s work tends to have an almost diagrammatic structure, and he’s noted as being somewhat ‘emotionally removed’ from the issues he addresses in his work. The result is that it’s one of the most easily readable works in a show that doesn’t particularly favour them.

Ed Fornieles, Dorm Daze, 2011-16, installation view Emotional Supply Chains at Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2016. Photo: David Bebber

 

David Raymond Conroy’s work, entitled (You (People) Are All The Same) (2016) is a newly commissioned work which takes the structural identifiers of long-form journalism (which is itself a useful commentary on attention spans in our current epoch) and podcasts to explore Conroy’s attempts to make a work based on encounters with homeless people in Las Vagas. Central here is the narrative technique as a medium; a slowly unwinding story that while no doubt for many is synonymous with online broadcasting, really harks back further to the golden days of radio. Ostensibly the piece is about making work, the notion of authenticity and the relationship with the audience, but also the way that a story is also often subsumed by the way it is told and ‘formatted.’

For me the highlight of the exhibition is Neïl Beloufa’s large scale installation in the middle gallery, Lifestyles (2013), which contains the video work People’s passion, lifestyle, beautiful wine, gigantic glass town, all surrounded by water (2011). The latter work is an almost clichéd presentation of an upper-class, gated neighbourhood, all carefully sanitised and full of equally non-threatening individuals discussing how they spend their leisure time. One fantastically on point piece of dialogue comes from what sounds like a real estate agent, talking about being able to go up the mountains to ski, then go to the beach to surf before going out on the town for dinner all in the same day (with brief, strategic naps in between). It all sounds like more activity than most people fit into an average month, both in terms of time and energy. The dialogue of course is all carefully scripted, a perfect illustration of how we construct not only ourselves but also some particular suggestion of our surroundings. Beloufa’s work here is disrupted by a series of assemblages, which cut through the video projection, dissecting the interviews into multiple panels and mirrors, and further emphasising the fragility of some of these constructed presentations, regardless of how immaculate they might appear from the outside.

Ann Hirsch, Playground (The Beginning), 2016, installation view Emotional Supply Chains, Zabludowicz Collection, 2016. 

 

In the rear gallery space, several artists reference some of the supposedly quintessential hallmark platforms of the digital age, such as Facebook, Youtube and Instagram. The rise of social media, online celebrities, and even the somewhat cliché idea of the “leaked” sex-tape have all become synonymous with the curation of the 21st century self, something explored in different ways by artists like Frances Stark, Ed Fornieles and Ann Hirsche. In this part of the exhibition, perhaps the strongest ties can be found with the exhibition Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966)[1], currently running at Whitechapel Gallery. In that exhibition as in Emotional Supply Chains, the onset of new technologies and platforms experienced by a younger generation of artists form the basis of their conceptual considerations of the self, as well as more specific sculptural forms. Hirsch’s piece in particular is interesting in the way it subtly charts the changes within the internet itself, referencing the ubiquitous chat rooms of the late 1990s and early 2000s with the more established mediums of the present day, with their incorporation of moving image, photography and other interactive elements.

David Blandy, Child of the Atom, 2010, installation view Emotional Supply Chains at Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2016. Photo: David Bebber

 

On the upstairs mezzanine, works which address notions of family, history and nationality come to fore, most strongly perhaps in David Blandy’s installation Child of the Atom (2010) and Aleksandra Domanovic’s 19:30 (2010-11). Blandy’s work explores a family myth that connects his late father’s time as a prisoner of war to the bombing of Hiroshima, in a kind of constructed set that is visually one of the most striking elements of the whole exhibition. Domanovic’s work, spread across two screens addresses the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by collaging materials from television news themes and also rave parties held in the region. This work in particular addresses the way identity is increasingly a pastiche of media, curated to fit a pre-determined format like Facebook or Tumblr, speaking to the heart of the exhibition’s overall consideration of where the multiplicity ends and the frequently more corporate manipulation begins.

The show itself is unabashedly dense, due in no small to its division into three sections. At Whitechapel, the curators organised that show by exploring the contemporary works currently being produced in the lower galleries, before juxtaposing them upstairs with a selection of work that shows how some of these ideas had been gestating over a period of decades. The result was something fantastically coherent and very wide ranging. At Zabludowicz Collection the work is more recent, the installation instead emphasising thematic links between specific works that feels like it leaves gaps in the dialogue between different artists. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the work casts a broader view than the more common focus on social media or the clumsily inadequate ‘post-internet’ tag that frequently gets used when discussing works like this. Ultimately the exhibition feels like one which leaves a great deal more open-ended than it makes any attempt to reconcile, perhaps highlighting how in-flux so many of these conceptual concerns still are.

By Will Gresson

[1] http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/electronic-superhighway/

William Forsythe, Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, no. 2, 2013. 20th Biennale of Sydney

It is interesting to discover that the leitmotif of this year´s Biennale of Sydney has been the same that caused a strong controversy two years ago. On that occasion, the connections of the Biennale’s founding sponsor with the management of offshore detention centres provoked a boycott by several artists, thus focusing attention on the event more than ever before. This year, the word “embassy” occupies billboards, leaflets, and social media, and reminds us that, unfortunately, the question of immigration and borders still lives in news headlines around the world. Nevertheless, there have been no headlines for Oscar Murillo, one of the artists invited to the Biennale, whose decision to flush his British passport in the plane’s toilet during his flight to Sydney lead to his detention and later deportation. This circumstance has prevented him from finishing his intervention in the city and had little impact other than in a few art-related media –at least at the moment of writing this post.

Charwei Tsai, Spiral Incense Mantra, 2014. 20th Biennale of Sydney

 

However debatable Murillo’s action and intentions might be, the truth is that Stephanie Rosenthal, artistic director of the 20th Biennale, has taken the idea of embassy as a shelter, a place where any person is free to express his/her ideas and visions of the world, far removed from the notion of restriction or border. More precisely, she has named the 5 venues that conform the Biennale´s exhibition “Embassies of Thought.” Consequently, every embassy stands for a different way of experiencing the world, and as a group they form the idea of a present that has surpassed our expectations that the future would be as it was depicted in science-fiction literature –hence the title of the exhibition The Future is Already Here –It’s Just not Evenly Distributed. Thus, Cockatoo Island is the Embassy of the Real; Carriageworks, the Embassy of Disappearance; the Art Gallery of NSW, the Embassy of Spirits; the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Embassy of Translation; Artspace, the Embassy of Non-Participation; the Mortuary Station, the Embassy of Transition; a mobile bookstall, the Embassy of Stanislaw Lem. In addition, different places around the city, called in-between spaces, also host interventions –Camperdown Cemetery, the Royal Botanic Gardens, and Newtown Library, among others.

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, installation view. 20th Biennale of Sydney

 

That this Biennale has a focus on performance art is not only apparent by watching the curatorial selection; the opening keynote address by choreographer Boris Charmatz, who explained his idea of a museum of dance, is a statement by itself. Performances and choreographies as well as virtual reality are the highlight this year. In a wider sense, time, which is at the core of any performance, is present in most of the artworks and invites the public to participate in one way or another. In this regard, venues seem to be less crowded, maybe because of the type of works and their distribution, which invites to stroll about spending more time in each place. This approach is undoubtedly the best way to discover every layer of meaning and history behind some of the works like Archie Moore’s hut in the Botanic Gardens, Bharti Kher’s women, or Chiharu Shiota’s dreamscape. Sometimes artists ask the visitor to become the performer, as is the case of William Forsythe and Lee Mingwei; at other times they propose some kind of reflective stop in their installations –Taro Shinoda, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu and Charwei Tsai are excellent examples.

Chiharu Shiota, Conscious Sleep, 2016. 20th Biennale of Sydney

 

Despite the transitory aspect of some of this Biennale’s works, this year’s catalogue is made to last. If you want to have a list of artists, photographs, and biographies to remember, just buy the exhibition’s guide. The catalogue, on the other hand, is a compilation of very different texts that fill the broad spectrum of the exhibition title and contextualise the contents of every embassy. It is not limited to specific writings by art critics and artists, but includes newspaper articles, political speeches, historic texts, and excerpts from other books, to name just a few examples. Some of them are part of Rosenthal’s research for this Biennale, and some are part of the bedside readings that support her work as a curator. This is a noteworthy sourcebook that one reads time and again, choosing different texts at different moments, no matter how far from art some may seem at a first glance. Actually, there are very few things in life that have no interest from an artist’s point of view, and this Biennale’s catalogue, as a complement to the exhibition, opens our eyes to the connections of contemporary art with the rest of the world in its broadest sense.

By Paula Llull

The Artist as Activist: Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2016, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

It takes a powerful and visually arresting body of work to compete with the structurally counterintuitive galleries of the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing (moviegoers, incidentally, may even recognize this museum’s uninhibited interior as one of the sets in the recently released Batman vs. Superman).  Bangladeshi artists Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman don’t disappoint.  This husband and wife duo combine social activism with an impressively diverse array of multimedia work, speaking to social issues through art that’s both visually compelling and finely crafted. 

They’ve acquired international recognition, representing Bangladesh at the 2011 Venice Biannale.     But this show, The Artist as Activist, is the first ever to offer a retrospective survey of both of their works, which impressively span drawing, sculpture, video-art, performance, installation, and photography, and more.  Visually and conceptually, the artists pair well together.  In sculpture, they disconcertingly work with surgical scissors and razor blades, offering, quite literally, sharp commentary on Bangladeshi social issues.

The Artist as Activist: Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2016, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Tayeba Begum Lipi’s work presents us with the welcoming apparatus of a domestic interior, ironically rendered with razor blades, thus metamorphosing objects of the home into something sinister and dangerous.  Her razor-sculptures depict, with lucid detail, a shoe closet, a baby’s crib, a bed, a sewing machine, a vanity, and a bathtub.  These works are augmented  by a two-channel video installation in which the artist goes through the motions of marrying herself, subverting the still-current practice of arranged marriages.  Elsewhere in the exhibit, her collaborative installation with Rahman, Toys are Watching Toys, allegorically depicts arranged-marriages as ritual animal slaughter.

The Artist as Activist: Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2016, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Mahbubur Rahman offers similarly unsettling sculptures.  In his kinetic Sounds from Nowhere, an automated hacksaw violently swipes away at the fragile strings of a violin.  The work obliquely addresses the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory, in which hundreds of menially-paid workers died; in the aftermath, hacksaws both helped rescue people and, alternately, amputate limbs.  Perhaps his most disconcerting work is a helmet and facemask comprised entirely of surgical scissors, their handles pointed inward and their blades menacingly sticking outward.  The work is accompanied by a photograph of the artist wearing the grisly mask during a performance.

Both artists use material that carries booth personal and political resonance.  While Lipi works with razor blades because of their associations with violence, they also recall her childhood, during which, on occasion, she assisted midwives by sanitizing the razor blades used to assist delivery.  For Rahman, scissors evoke partition and division (recurrent themes in the post-colonial Indian subcontinent), but they also reference the loss of one of his own fingers in a childhood accident.

The Artist as Activist: Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2016, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Though their work addresses issues specific to Bangladesh, much of it carries global resonance. Rahman’s confrontationally large charcoal drawings addressing forced migration, for example, certainly speak to the current migration crisis in Europe, asking us to pause and consider the individual humans behind the headlines.  And Sounds from Nowhere incriminates the global garment industry, which almost universally exploits cheap labor.  Matisse once wrote that he wished to create art “filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting … similar to a comfortable armchair.”  For Rhaman and Lipi, the armchair would be made of razor blades, and The Artist as Activist is about as near the opposite of Matisse’s halcyon vision that art could possibly get.

By Jonathan Rinck

Orly Genger, “Terra,” Oklahoma City Contemporary Arts Center.

I saw Orly Genger’s Terra at the end of its life, in February of 2016. In early April, the sculpture will be gone. Installed in October of 2014 in Oklahoma City, the work lived in the blocks of a public park for one and a half years, sponsored by Oklahoma Contemporary.

The work was by all accounts very popular during its lifetime, as the loops and whorls of red rope cameoed in social media posts and snapshots. Perhaps it is the color, the texture, or simply the size of the work that drew people to it. The rope is repurposed lobster rope, 1.4 million feet of it, painted a bright terracotta red.

Orly Genger, “Terra,” Oklahoma City Contemporary Arts Center.

 

But what drew me into the sculpture was the detail, the conspicuous signs of aging that occurred as the artwork spent 18 months out in the sun, rain, wind, and snow. The paint was cracking and peeling. As the rope settled, the zip-ties and rebar staked used to pile and anchor it were becoming visible. It had attracted leaf litter, and other scraps blown by the wind. In some places, it almost appeared to be rotting, containing moisture and dark dirt within the deep recesses of its knots and folds.

Orly Genger, “Terra,” Oklahoma City Contemporary Arts Center.

 

But for all of this, the sculpture was still spectacular and impressive. Even as it condensed and settled, the work maintained its curving scale. Decreased in height, the rope within the sculpture was ever as long. Despite how the work had changed, it was not evaporating, it was not degrading, it was not fading away into the background. I thought about how this rope, no longer used for lobster traps, would still have existed even if it had not been built into a sculpture by Genger. The shadows it cast across the park in the evening sky gave the material an opaque quality. This is a wide, twisting wall, built from the material that is left over from our societal machinations. Even after the sculpture is gone, that material will continue to exist. Terra was about permanency, as much as it was temporary.

And even if you missed Terra before its inevitable removal, you may yet see it again. In Austin, Texas, the Contemporary Austin has just sponsored Genger’s Hurlyburly, a similar work of knotted rope, that will be in place from early 2016 through February 2017. That work is made with the same rope used in Genger’s Current, which was sponsored by the same institution in 2014. Where one might find the materials in Terra in the future, we can only guess. But human material has a way of sticking around, and artists like Orly Genger remind us of this, with their impressive, temporary constructions.

By Adam Rothstein

Jesse Jones, NO MORE FUN AND GAMES, installation photograph. Image by writer.

Robert Altman’s 3 Women originated within a dream, and retains a telltale slipperiness. The film’s main characters, Millie and Pinky, are increasingly unpinned as they go through their intense co-existence in an under-populated desert town in California, skewing, layering and swapping any characterisation that emerges as events unfold. Their qualities are so deeply relative that either woman is hard to imagine outside of their shifting dynamic.

Jesse Jones’ NO MORE FUN AND GAMES uses the film as a contextual touchstone. Through its evocation of the complexity of female relationships, the artist toys with the interactions that make up institutions, exhibition and canonisation. The multi-faceted project has many connected processes, and, much like the film, is enriched and altered with each additional layer.

The diminished role of women in art has left their work underrepresented and culturally undervalued. The group show within the gallery space – act one of three within the project, titled “Curating the Canon” – is composed of female artists’ work that has been selected by the Feminist Parasite Institution, a collective of arts professionals and activists brought together by Jones to work with the Hugh Lane gallery’s collection. A growing process of re-alignment activates this initially straightforward premise, with the conditions in preceding gallery spaces segueing into and colouring this chosen work.

Jesse Jones, NO MORE FUN AND GAMES, installation photograph. Image by writer.

 

First, the institution gives itself an echoing authority in its own reception desk installed within the gallery, set against a salmon pink wall and raised high in a comical power play. It practically functions with exhibition literature and information, but also exists as a physical threshold between these two institutions – of Hugh Lane and Parasite Institute – that subsume one another.

Sound drifting in from the adjacent small space is a flute composition by Gerard Busby, who did the musical score for the original film. An anthropomorphic stand-mounted speaker plays the solo recording, composed of fast and fragmented ascending and descending scales and punctuated with longer notes. The constantly shifting time signature grates against this melodic arrangement; with no rhythm to settle into it’s faintly discomforting, a pattern that’s nonetheless unpredictable.

Two more speakers sit within the following room, their positions suggesting a path through. Shortly after entry, a black-attired, white-gloved person at the far side strides briskly across in a zig-zag pattern, cutting across the intended route. They drag a floor-length gauze curtain behind them along a rail path. An outstretched, aged arm with long pointed nails, an image that could be either inert or active, suddenly divides and visually layers the space. Getting through means skirting along the edges of the gallery and grazing past this translucent fabric.

Jesse Jones, NO MORE FUN AND GAMES, installation photograph. Image by writer.

 

This interplay of sound, action and image is a loaded motif from 3 Women, where information is more evocative than strictly reliable. Jones, who works primarily in film, has spoken of her aim to use the medium in a different way than straightforward moving image, and here pulls apart and draws out its elements. The image intercepts the viewer, but is in itself mediated by those participating in its presence. Is the viewer in the over-arching embrace of art history, past or forgotten women, or some version of both? Outside of the linear nature of film and the narrative that can be picked from it, it is another evocation with little solidity.

Jesse Jones, NO MORE FUN AND GAMES, installation photograph. Image by writer.

 

The curtain rail connects the final two spaces, an interruption in either room at any time. When outside of the group exhibition space, the show is brightly lit; within, the works are under the hazy layer, to be seen around or through. The art is mounted against a metallic wall surface, creating a mirage-like reflection, sandwiching the work between these qualities.

There’s a breadth of work on show, but the exhibition does not, thankfully, take a ‘greatest hits’ approach to redressing the balance of female artist exposure. It’s a small exhibition that wears the weight of expectation lightly and with humour: in Isobel Gloag’s 1915 painting The Woman with Puppet, the figure dangles suited men above her reclining, naked body, whilst Dietro Le Quinte by Janet Mullarny is a sculpted beast-headed woman in a dress, hands clasped whilst chomping down on a small girl. Both works have a darkly comical destruction, suggesting much more than is stated or seen. Gwen John’s two studies of a young girl share physical similarities in the mottled, dabbed paint, and also sit side by side.

Each of the seven pieces of work is a fragment of practice, a vague suggestion of something concealed and revealed in equal measure, through abstract painting, suggestive place, and myth or imagination. In this way art functions like a film still, or isolated phrase of music: ungrounded and endlessly suggestive for it.

NO MORE FUN AND GAMES is exhibiting at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane until 26th June 2016.

By Dorothy Hunter

Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto, 2014/2015. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

I first encountered Julian Rosefeldt’s work in 2010 when he won the Vattenfall Contemporary Prize, resulting in the exhibition ‘Living in Oblivion’ at Berlinische Gallery. His video and photographic work demonstrated what could best be described as a cinematic eye; his film installation revealing a keen sense of narrative and the blurring of fiction and reality. The speculative element of his work, particularly evident in The Shift (2008) suggested how Rosefeldt’s sense of place could be used to frame broadly introspective expressions of the human condition.

Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto, 2014/2015. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

 

For his new exhibition Manifesto, currently showing at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Rosefeldt turned to the manifesto as source material from which to create a series of striking and beautifully orchestrated vignettes. Taken from a collection of roughly 60 different texts, Rosefeldt has constructed 13 different scripts that oscillate between vibrant and explosive declarations, nuanced directives and sometimes wildly philosophical and abstracted outbursts. These collaged scripts are performed by a variety of different characters, a teacher, a factory worker, a puppeteer, all performed by actress Cate Blanchet. The effect is compelling, and it becomes possible to momentarily lose sight of the huge scale of the installation as you become distracted by specific figures.

Blanchet’s acting prowess here probably shouldn’t be understated. Her performances are incredibly captivating. Of the thirteen, there were two in particular which I found especially difficult to step away from. The first of these featured the Australian actress seemingly in her element as a school teacher, reciting lines in part taken from the Dogma 95 Vow of Chastity to a room of young school children, no older than 8 or 9 at most. Hearing these small children dutifully recite lines about authentic light and the death of the author is simultaneously both amusing and mildly disturbing:

Blanchet: “The Director Must Not Be….?”

Children: “Credited!”

It feels like the perfect demonstration of the way that doctrine and ideology are readily swallowed up by those either willing or susceptible to them, something which really functions as a wider metaphor for the exhibition as a whole.

Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto, 2014/2015. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

 

In a different scene, Blanchet plays an industrial worker who quietly muses to herself in a notebook, devotedly dolling out beans on toast for her child before heading to work in what looks like a metal scrap yard. The effect is somehow reversed in this narrative, the audience of children replaced by a sense of bleak isolation; an empty space with words reverberating around it. The shots are all masterfully executed, and the quiet, brooding feeling of this segment sustains the viewer’s eye even during the moment when all of the films simultaneously link up in a monotone monologue that breaks the otherwise steadily maintained disconnect between each scene. This video (the interview is only available in German) gives some indication of how large the installation feels, and how the scenes come together in their cacophonous and polemical totality.

Late last year I recall seeing Ragnar Kjartansson’s similarly mammoth audio visual installation The Visitors at Brewer Street Car Park in Soho, London. Spread across nine screens, that work saw the artist and a host of collaborators performing what he described as a “feminine nihilistic gospel song”. What made that piece so incredible to experience was the way each performer came in and out of the piece, creating space for each other within the recital as a whole. An unspoken synergy ran through that work, even as each individual was filmed in a separate room of an old house in New York State.

Julian Rosefeldt: Manifesto, 2014/2015. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

 

In comparison, what makes Rosefeldt’s work here feel so engaging is the conscious and sustained disconnect he conjures up by juxtaposing these different scenes together inside a single darkened space. It’s a beautiful and deliberate presentation of multiplicity, exacerbated somewhat by the fact that the texts are themselves collaged from a variety of sources before being performed by what feels like an equally broad spectrum of characters. The source material and its development both place the work in a specific cultural framework that antagonises the role of the manifesto as a means to condense and define, as well as framing creative and cultural pursuits as political actions, posing questions about intention, motivation and the relationship between theory and praxis.

Manifesto will be shown at Hamburger Bahnhof until July 10th, and a 90 minute version of the work will screen at selected film festivals later this year.

By Will Gresson

Beautification Machine, 2014, Andy Diaz Hope and Jon Bernson. Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art.

The room in which I found Adam Diaz Hope and Jon Bernson’s installation Beautification Machine, at the Nevada Museum of Art, is full of images. Not images really, but the pieces of images. Shattered fragments of images, broken up as if by a kaleidoscope, swirling across the black walls, around a central radiant spire of glass in the center of their orbit.

These are the broken edges of image, its lines and colors. I can recognize the images that were broken and distributed here. It is the pieces of a television news broadcast. I can hear the audio, just a bit, as it is garbled and processed into an ambient soundscape by the installation electronics.

Beautification Machine, 2014, Andy Diaz Hope and Jon Bernson. Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art.

 

But there are pieces, in and amongst these shattered images, that I would recognize anywhere. The captioned headlines of 24-hour cable news programs. The precise, white-on-red text. If I watched more news, I could probably identify the channel by its branded design. Spinning across the dark ceiling, is a fractured caption with the distinctive news signifier, “Obama.” As the cable news feed continues to break across the ceiling and the walls, I recognize when it cuts to commercial. I see the recognizable face of a spokesperson for an insurance company, in a recognizable ad.

In a sense, this is not a deconstructed news feed at all. This is the same news feed, that I’ve seen countless times before, in various installations, sculptural and not. I see the same fractions of headlines in the airport, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, in stores, and in bars. I hear these audio captions, this basic utterances of media, in the conversations of strangers at restaurants, on trains, and on the street. These are the small indicators that let me know that news is all around me. It is a thing that we have come to define, a thing that lasts 24 hours a day, a thing that we know when we see it, even when how we see it is reflected and scattered across the inside of a dark room.

Beautification Machine, 2014, Andy Diaz Hope and Jon Bernson. Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art.

 

The Beautification Machine is not really breaking up media, it is obscuring it, but only slightly. The sensation is much like watching television with your spread fingers held up in front of your face, the way one might watch a horror film. You still know that the terror is out there, the horror you can’t stand to see in full depiction upon the screen will still play out. But it is not quite as immediate as it was. There is a shroud between you and the terrible images. And although that veil of fingers offers no real protection, for images, it works well enough.

The point of Beautification Machine, according to the artists’ statement, is not to allow the viewer to hide from the news, but to make it beautiful. I’m not certain that it succeeds in this. The swirling of colors and ambient soundscape is certain luminous and memorable, but I don’t know that media can be made to be beautiful. That is not what the media image is. By reflecting, redirecting, and obscuring the image, it is broken up, like a pane of glass on contact with a rock. But what rains down upon the pavement afterwards is still glass. In that captivating power of TV media, allowing it to invade our senses in so many venues throughout society, there are many emotions at play. And by working with this as its medium, Beautification Machine is perhaps truer to its material than aesthetics might otherwise allow.

By Adam Rothstein

Rodney McMillian: The Black Show, 2016, installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Constance Mensh.

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania hosts The Black Show, works by Los Angeles-based artist Rodney McMillian. The Black Show continues the artist’s exploration of complexities where race, place, power, culture, history, socio-economic and political systems coalesce into physical reality. McMillian’s latest exhibition is a theatrical environment set up with screenings of many new choreographed videos, prop-like objects and stage, complete with curtains for an unusually provoking presence.

Succulent (2010) welcomes the viewer in the space and the style of the large, black stitched vinyl wall sculpture is repeated in several places. Wizard (for Doro) 2013, another black vinyl sculpture positioned on the center of the back wall, protrudes from the wall with a point. The allusion to the Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard or the Knighthawk security guards is immediate. With the addition to the simple science fiction narrative that is located within McMillian’s video and allusion to sci-fy literature, the sculpture creates a surreal version of the KKK, nearly poking fun the antagonistic and xenophobic forces that spread through the United States as the dark side.

Rodney McMillian: The Black Show, 2016, installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Constance Mensh.

 

Many Moons (2015) suggests time as in ages, historical, ancestral. The large painting divides the room into nearly a night and day. The painting on the side viewers are introduced to depicts a landscape of Southern Gothic style. Light and moss-covered trees of the Deep South frame the darker side of the curtain. This side shows a large, black vinyl moon high up on the wall overlooking a video of McMillian reading an A.A. Milne children’s book to an abandoned building in Dockery, Mississippi. Although darkest of the exhibition, this space provides the most comforting setting, the feeling of a backstage area.

Rodney McMillian: The Black Show, 2016, installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Photo: Constance Mensh.

 

The psychological weight of Many moons curtain as a stage backdrop or curtain, the weight of the giant lungs of Untitled (lungs) (2008-2013) and the dark vinyl material offer a heavy and ominous physicality opposed to the floating screens and soft sculptures emanating from the walls. What McMillian doesn’t offer directly to the viewer is easily manufactured from the literal and metaphorical dark spaces throughout exhibit. The stage set, with an uncomfortable but provoking feeling of dark thoughts reminiscent of the night where anything goes. This metaphor is the perfect stand-in for the struggle of race, money and power from the earliest to modern times. Videos extend specificity to the overall narrative as in Preacher Man (2015) and a beckoning: We are not who we think we are (2015).

The Black Show indicates black as symbolism of McMillians race and history of African-Americans, but also a psychological setting for equal parts of fear, solitude and the unknown. The complicated nature of black history and America’s struggles with it, both past and present, are brought out in complex structures presented by McMillian. Layers of institutional racism, culture and science fiction create dimensions that are stitched together, much like the artist’s literal soft sculptures of black vinyl or videos throughout the space. These blurbs of information create an uneasy sense of utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic visions of a future landscape.

By Jake Weigel

Indigenous Beauty, Installation View. Courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art

It’s easy to see why Native American visual culture captured the imagination of 20th Century artists like Jackson Pollock and Adolph Gottlieb.  It’s an art that thrives on the abstraction of form and the enacting of performance.  Through May 8, the Toledo Museum of Art’s exhibition Indigenous Beauty displays a generous portion of the private collection of Charles and Valerie Diker, including 120 artifacts and works of art that chronologically span from about 200 AD to the present, revealing how contemporary Native American artists can produce innovative work that also remains deeply rooted in a rich cultural heritage several millennia old.      

Much of this art was intended to be set in motion through performance. Elaborate ceremonial wooden rattles and clappers often accompanied dances and shamanistic ritual, for example.  Artist Preston Singletary creates unmistakably contemporary versions of these ceremonial rattles, drawing from Tlingit (Northwestern Coast) visual culture.    His Oystercather Rattle depicts a shaman astride the back of a highly stylized oystercatcher.  The oystercatcher is a shorebird that straddles the boundary between land and water, just as a shaman was expected to straddle the boundary between the physical and the spiritual.  Consequently, the rattles frequently took the form of the bird, and several 19th century wooden rattles on view offer an instructive visual comparison.  By working with blown and carved glass, Singletary lends a fresh look to a traditional object.

Nancy Youngblood (Santa Clara, b. 1955). Melon Jar, 1980s. Ceramic. 4 3/4 x 11 in. The Diker Collection (756).
Courtesy American Federation of Arts

 

The pottery on display also responds to tradition.  Some of the oldest artifacts on view, such as a Pueblo water jar from 1150, are displayed right next to the contemporary pottery of Nancy Youngblood, who works using precisely the same materials and process that many generations of Pueblo women have, having learned by watching her mother and grandmother.  Like traditional Pueblo pottery, her work begins as coil pots which she then smoothes.  But into their surfaces she carves a vortex of swirling ridges; these are her own invention, not derived from traditional Pueblo Pottery.  In accordance with Pueblo tradition, prayer is an integral part of her creative process, and she prays over every pot and bowl she creates.

Preston Singletary (Tlingit, b. 1963). Oystercatcher Rattle, 2011. Blown and sand-carved glass, human hair. 22 x 17 x 6 in. The Diker Collection (826). Courtesy American Federation of Arts

 

This is not a show of contemporary Native American art, though there is some on view.  Viewers will also encounter original masks, textiles, basketry, weaponry, carving, katsina dolls, and illustration, mostly from the 19th Century.  But in the catalogue’s forward, Charles and Valerie Diker explain that they believe American Indian art and Modern art “speak well” to each other, and suggest a strong visual parallel between the crisp, vertical form of a Pawnee Gunstock club and the reductive forms of Brancusi.

Furthermore, while Gottlieb, Pollock, and others may have been drawn to American Indian art for its abstraction, it’s also visionary in its effortless fusion of functionality and beauty.  In some respects, it’s even countercultural: the overwhelming majority of images we now encounter take the form of advertisements encouraging us to indulge in the transient and the trivial, whereas Native American art’s emphasis is frequently on the spiritual and the eternal.  Perhaps even the oldest Native American art is more relevant now than ever.

Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art from the Diker Collection is organized by the American Federation of Arts. This exhibition was made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor, the JFM Foundation, and Mrs. Donald M. Cox.

By Jonathan Rinck

Installation view, Tim Hawkinson: Counterclockwize at Pace Gallery. Photo by Tom Barratt / Pace Gallery.

Tim Hawkinson’s constructions, often kinetic, have layered associations that go backward in time, and this could be one reason why his exhibition — through April 23 at Pace, 537 West 24th Street– is called “Counterclockwise.”  The fourteen sculptures and two large drawings employ animation, electronics, and quotidian materials to explore humorous notions about time and the universe. To me, going counterclockwise implies going left rather than right and taking the intuitive rather than the logical approach to problem-solving. My Chinese mentor, Dr. Nelson Wu, used to tell a story in which the counterclockwise path was part of a spiritual journey. Even more than Slow Food and Slow Hands, Counterclockwise here suggests going back to understanding how the world works.

Six sculptures in a middle gallery caught my attention immediately, starting with Laocoön, 2004, a swirling white blown-out tire 13 feet tall constructed from paper, wire, string, foam, and rubber. The tire tread pattern is original, possibly symbolic. The title refers to the marble Hellenistic sculpture of a Trojan priest and his two sons battling attacking serpents – a religious war pitting Trojan against “pagan” myths and belief systems. Hawkinson’s tire captures some of the spiraling lines of the marble serpent and figures as it deftly alludes to America’s preoccupation with speed (instead of safety) and perhaps to power struggles similar to Laocoön’s. This sculpture is simultaneously abstract and figurative, an outcry about clashing belief systems.

Tim Hawkinson, Laocoon, 2004. Paper, wire, string, foam and rubber.
13′ x 9′ x 5′ (396.2 cm x 274.3 cm x 152.4 cm). Photo courtesy of the artist © tim hawkinson, courtesy pace gallery.

 

Nearby, Skinned Knee, 2009, a 74” high “disembodied” skinned knee suggests childhood accidents that seem more serious than they are or, conversely, that even small human injuries may have larger consequences.

The third oversized work in the room, Koruru, 2009, is a self-inflating mask 10’ tall that “breathes” softly as it imitates a Maori mask coming to life. It also replicates a pair of the latest car taillights. The artist told me that the original inspiration was a New Zealand coin with the Maori mask that he found on a Los Angeles playground. The Pace installers were discussing the way the double taillights had LED-like lights on top for eyes as I admired the artist’s use of small silver cups and tin foil to complete the nose area of the mask.  This head is grand and important whereas in real life, the Maori culture and roots have been, to a degree, marginalized and commercialized, much like indigenous cultures worldwide.

Tim Hawkinson, Koruru, 2009. Soda bottles, egg cartons, pill bottles, foil and vinyl.
10′ x 6′ 6″ x 3′ (304.8 cm x 198.1 cm x 91.4 cm). Photo courtesy of the artist © tim hawkinson, courtesy pace gallery.

 

Two smaller works in this gallery complete a circuit of double meanings. Hose, 2013, is a ribbed white object that resembles a short hose under the sink in my kitchen. Yet it is fragile, made from reconstituted eggshells ground with a diamond grinder. I am unsure whether the slightly curving hose 4 ½” long is also a metaphor for a part of the male anatomy that is not often considered fragile.  Board Clock, 2012, is a 72” tall wooden plank with a cut knothole area. The outer and inner rings are motorized to read time in hours and minutes.  The final witticism in this room is a skeleton in a closet; its bones are made from rawhide dog chews.  Hawkinson’s range and craft skills throughout the exhibition are top notch. He manages to turn ordinary materials into wondrous sculpture.

Tim Hawkinson, World Clock, 2012. medicine cabinet, ace bandage, lotion bottle, prescription medicine bottle, dental floss, deodorant, toothbrushes, plastic cup, pump soap bottle, nail clipper and clock motors. 25=1/2″ x 16″ x 21″ (64.8 cm x 40.6 cm x 53.3 cm). Photo courtesy of the artist © tim hawkinson, courtesy pace gallery.

 

In the entrance gallery, World Clock, 2012 is a rusty medicine cabinet in which each object is motorized to tell hours and minutes in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Moscow, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Sydney. For example, a roll on deodorant represents Moscow with a hair on the roller ball showing time in hours and the seam of the ball showing minutes. Viewers can extrude for themselves the allegories and metaphors in these time pieces. This is one example of why it’s fun to see the humor  in Hawkinson’s work in person. Also, scale is important, and smaller works like this one and giant works including Koruru are more engaging in real life.

Seeing the kinetic moves of Hawkinson’s sculpture is also a treat. Ranting Mop Head, 1995 and the signature School Desk, 1993, are complex (many parts) yet elementary (nails, wires, tiny batteries & conductors, etc.) animated works. Switches and notches built into an old pulpit in another room control the mophead’s outbursts.  Even more primitive engineering allows the school desk apparatus to “write” Hawkinson’s signature.

Tim Hawkinson, Ranting Mop Head. (Synthesized Voice), 1995. mop, lectern and mixed media; motorized, with sound. Overall: 68 x 43 x 20″ (176.4 x 109.2 x 50.8 cm) Mop: 68 x 23 x 23″ (172.7 x 58.4 x 58.4 cm) Lectern: 51-1/2 x 28 x 20″ (130.8 x 71.1 x 50.8 cm) Cable: 204″ (517.96 cm). Photo courtesy of the artist © tim hawkinson, courtesy pace gallery.

 

Orrery, 2010, a 93” high seated lady at a spinning wheel, turns many ways at once. The title refers to the universe, its rotating planets, and time. Lady Time’s lumpy and misshapen body seems slightly in overdrive with her head, ears, eyes, and fingers all spinning, along with her wheel made of plastic bottle parts. The rug beneath her feet has twelve, variously-timed concentric moving circles; the rag rug pattern for the solar system is actually bicycle tire tracks in the sand. Orrery  asks us to play, to question how things are made, what we see, and how we “spend” our time.

Tim Hawkinson, Orrery, 2010. plastic bottles, shopping bags, inkjet prints, twine, string, wire, foam, springs, tape, lead and steel. 93″ x 96″ x 96″ (236.2 cm x 243.8 cm x 243.8 cm). Photo courtesy of the artist © tim hawkinson, courtesy pace gallery.

 

This exhibition highlights some Hawkinson sculpture over the past twenty years. Hawkinson has participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including the Venice Biennale (1999), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, (2000), and the 2003 Corcoran Biennial in Washington, D.C.

By Jan Garden Castro

Links to his work include:

http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/175/tim-hawkinson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hawkinson
https://artifexpress.com/pages/tim-hawkinson

Susannah Worth, How to Do Things with Salad, 2016. Installation view. Photo: Hydar Dewachi

In the age of social media, images of food have become almost a visual cliché. A cursory glance at any friend’s Facebook feed or Instagram account will very quickly reveal that it has become seemingly de rigueur that people share their culinary experiences via the internet. From proud home cooks to would-be travel bloggers, anyone who has spent any time cultivating the finer points of their online presence will have shared at least one meal as part of their ‘brand building.’ This strange phenomenon has reached such comic levels, that only a few weeks ago I overheard two of my colleagues making fun of a third’s attempts to do just that. His crime? He had taken a photograph of two rather ordinary looking takeaway containers of soup and posted the image on his Facebook wall under the enthusiastic caption “best soup in Budapest!” In their view, the images suggested the soup just simply wasn’t visually appealing enough to warrant documentation; he was ‘doing it wrong.’

What is lost somewhat in discussing the social media frenzy to post immaculate images of one’s culinary pursuits is that food to one extent or another has always entailed a kind of ritualistic element. The performativity of both food preparation and consumption can entail everything from grabbing a burger on the way home from after-work drinks on a Friday, to the basic mechanics of the Holy Communion, and more besides. The notion of ‘breaking bread’ with someone connotes hospitality, generosity, cultural exchange and interaction, and often includes some element of shared cooking and eating.

Susannah Worth, How to Do Things with Salad, 2016. Installation view. Photo: Hydar Dewachi

 

With that in mind, artist Susannah Worth has taken salad as a starting point to create a site-sensitive installation in the Project Space, situated in Jerwood Space’s Café 171 in South London and programmed by Jerwood Visual Arts. Building on her previous research into the way food is translated into text and language (explored in her first book, “Digesting Recipes: The Art of Culinary Notation [Zero Books, 2015], this new body of work looks at images of food, and the significance of recording ‘culinary performances’ for others to see.

The installation consists of three parts. The first is a series of tablecloths designed by Worth featuring images of different salad dishes created during an event entitled Do Things with Salad (a play on Austin’s ‘How To Do Things With Word’ and a reference to the artist’s previous focus on food and language). This communal cooking exercise was held in November 2015 at Open School East and entailed participants preparing salads from a variety of recipes and ingredients collected by Worth. The tablecloths are the documentation of this performance, augmented here by a ceramic plate inscribed with a list of the ingredients and the participant’s names, as well as a sound work.

Susannah Worth, How to Do Things with Salad, 2016.
Installation view. Photo: Hydar Dewachi

 

The sound work itself is particularly interesting. Played on two sets of headphones hung up alongside the text of the work, the resulting piece is a collage of cooking sounds alongside a kind of floating narrative. It’s described in the press release as an ‘audio essay’ that combines “the sounds of labour and leisure, food preparation and consumption, analysis and anecdote, exploring some of the social, political, aesthetic, personal and historical significations of salad.” The illusion to the creation of a salad is perhaps overstated here, but the substance of the chronicle itself is certainly engaging, combining historical and personal experiences with recipes and preparation notes. It’s the clearest indication in an installation that perhaps lacks for its brevity of the depth of Worth’s research and engagement with food as source material.

In a peculiar twist, the relationship between the work and space occasionally suggests they are strangely at odds with one another. On the one hand, placing the work inside the café nicely touches on the kind of ritual of the gallery going experience; the parodied ‘exit through the gift shop and grab a coffee afterwards’ approach. However the placement of the headphones in the very narrow space between two tables and the separating wall on which they hang somehow makes this central component of the exhibition feel if not like an afterthought, than at least peripheral to what is happening.

Susannah Worth, How to Do Things with Salad, 2016.
Installation view. Photo: Hydar Dewachi

 

Reading through the text of the sound work is what brings home how loaded these simple images are, arranged in neatly ordered squares on the tablecloths. Questions over our relationship to food imagery and performance are slowly teased out through the subtle interplay of these different audio strands. Individually some suggest longer stories reaching back through personal or family histories, others focus on the food itself and its mechanics. Collectively they paint a more complicated picture, one which warrants extended time with the piece to really begin to unpick these different elements.

As a body of work, what Worth has done here feels most satisfying if viewed in terms of her previous work and research. Food is heavily laden with cultural signifiers, and the emphasis on specific ingredients and also the ethnic background of recipes as well as some of the characters in the audio essay help open up cultural economies not necessarily so obvious in the age of globalisation and trendy eating establishments. On this point in particular, Worth’s exhibition feels like an engaging progression in an equally interesting field of research.

By Will Gresson

Kenny Scharf, Cosmic Cavern. Courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery. Photo Joshua White/JWPictures.com

Keith Haring is in a studio, flipping over a tape playing the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” Basquiat is in a limo, watching a screen. Andy Warhol is in a jewelry store. Who are these people, and where are they? What is it that they are all taking part in?

I am in Paige Powell’s The Ride, and adjacently, in Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Cavern, which are both in the Portland Art Museum, through the beginning of April. These two installations are specifically placed on the same floor, next to each other, because they both are representative of a particular New York City art scene in the 1980s.

Paige Powell, Still from The Ride, 2015, 3-channel color digital projection; 18:42 min., Image courtesy of the artist.
© Paige Powell, reprint of image by permission.

 

Powell documented this art scene with photograph and VHS video. The Ride combines a number of these video clips, projecting them on a wall, superimposed inside of an image of another screen: the TV inside the back of a limo, on which Basquiat is watching something unknown (it turns out to be the movie Goldfinger, but this wouldn’t be apparent without the gallery text). Behind the video, is an alcove covered in photos of the time–the famous artists and their milieu, engaged in scenes not unlike those on the video.

Kenny Scharf, Cosmic Cavern. Courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery. Photo Joshua White/JWPictures.com

 

Down the hall is Cosmic Cavern, a day-glo panoply of ephemera that might date from the streets of 1980s New York: destroyed televisions, children’s toys, consumer packaging, magazine images, holiday decorations, fragments of broken mirror, and a disco ball. The materials cover the interior walls of a small wooden cube, slathered in reflective, fluorescent paint, set ablaze by blacklight bulbs, and animated by recordings of radio broadcasts from the era. The first incarnation of this installation was set up in the loft that Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf shared, in 1981. In The Ride, one of the video clips shows Haring leading Powell’s camera up the stairs, and into a blacklight room that very well might be this installation.

Who are all of these people, featured in the photographs and video? What is it that they are participating in? They are in a room, in a store, in a party, in a studio, in a scene, in a decade, in a photograph, in a video clip, in an art installation. These two works attempt to describe a time and place. They do so using two very different methods: one, the documentary technology of video and image, the other, the evocative use of assemblage sculpture, simultaneously deploying recognizable objects, and obscuring them under shimmering color, that breaks each object individually and unites them together. The effect is quite palpable. In each installation I feel that the forces of time and space are being seized, manipulated around me with the magic of a time machine. But where am I going? Can I be transported to this different time and place? I can exist in the same dimension that these artists once existed?

Paige Powell: Andy Warhol and Kenny Scharf, Mr. Chow, New York City, 1986.© Paige Powell, reprint of image by permission.

 

The VHS quality, itself a product of the time period, is sketchy and faded, the colors and light poorly recorded. In the video clip showing Haring climbing the dark stairs to the blacklight-lit loft, existing only in a mystical dimension of the 1980s in New York City, the video is grainy. In the blacklight, Haring’s white T-shirt glows, but his body becomes invisible. White garments from other unknown people dance in the dark, bobbing up and down in the video like ghosts. The garbled sound of unrecognizable music mixes among the different video feeds, and with the music from Cosmic Cavern down the hall. A universe is being conjured in these works. But where am I now? Haring, Basquiat, Warhol–are all tragically dead. Like we all will be, one day. But what universe am I in? Where is my milieu? What will document this experience today, in the 2010s, and will anyone watch it in a distant future?

Time is always removed. Like the wooden walls, temporarily constructed to contain the space of a gallery installation, time is a thing that you exist within. Until suddenly, you don’t.

By Adam Rothstein

Olafur Eliasson. “Dodecahedron Lamp”, 2005.

The Sagamore Hotel literally was born as an art hotel the winter of 9/11. In December, 2001, Art Basel Miami, in its first year, was cancelled except for a riveting show curated by Robert Chambers at the Bass Museum.[i]  New Sagamore owner Marty Taplin and his wife Cricket Taplin decided to host an art brunch to cheer up the still-nascent arts community,  and Cricket transformed the hotel with art from her private collection.

1. Pablo Cano. “Lady Liberty”, 2001. Industrial materials, aluminum trash cans, terracotta, cigarette foil, gesso paint, Elmer’s glue, 1950’s clock covered with cigarette foil forming her crown.

 

“The hotel was empty. We rented furniture,” Cricket Taplin recalled (see more from our talk at the end). Her initial art exhibition was a big hit with the art world, and continues to appeal both to tourists and the cognoscenti, who now, fifteen years later, flock to her exclusive, invitation-only brunch and collection.

Around 100 works are on view on the first floor, indoors and out – sculpture, installations, paintings, videos, photographs, mixed media works, and prints. In addition to the first floor lobby, game room, video lounge, and pool areas, the stairwells and guest rooms feature original art. Here are a few sculpture highlights from this engaging collection.

At the hotel’s lobby entrance, two shinning metal figures made from ordinary garbage cans represent “Lady Liberty” and “St. Catherine”.  Artist Pablo Cano created “Lady Liberty” in 2001 in homage to New York City and the terror attacks on 9/11.  The earliest “St. Catherine” sculpture in 2000 depicts the martyred saint wearing a plastic hubcap crown wheel.  Cano’s humor and wit transform humble materials.

10. Robert Chambers. “Rotorelief”, 2002. Existing Helicopter, metal, paint.

 

Additionally in the lobby, Will Ryman’s 132-inch-tall untitled paper maché thin man stands next to the reception desk as Roxy Paine’s “Amanita Virosa Wall #4,” created in 2001, wraps around the top wall of the reception desk, inviting new guests to inspect the mushroom families occupying the lobby. This sculpture installation of psychedelic mushrooms evokes the days when Paine was a roadie for the Grateful Dead.  Nearby, Cornelia Parker’s “Composition with Horns,” 2004 a sculpture of flattened instruments, hangs from the ceiling near a mesmerizing double-screen video by Leslie Thornton showing animals in nature next to their kaleidoscopic, abstract equivalents. A two-person “Swing” made of galvanized steel, resin, and fluorescent lights by Berthold Winter and Wolfgang Horbert hangs in the lobby.  Nearby is “Threadbare,” 2013, a 16 mm. film projector wrapped in 16 mm. film by Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson. On the far side of the lobby, above artsy functional chairs by Richard Artschwager and Alan Siegel is a 2015 Roberto Gómez sculpture made from acrylic paint; the abstract composition, “Untitled, Drape Series,” has clear complementary hues and a fluent, assertive presence. Making sculpture from paint mixes media in a literal way.

7. Roberto Gomez. “Untitled, Drape Series”, 2015. Sculpture made from Latex paint.

 

On the gallery walk to the pool, Leo Villareal’s “Sunburst” orange light sculpture and Tony Oursler’s video sculpture both have moving features while three wall sculptures/paintings by Emil Lukas and his larvae challenge notions about painting, sculpture, and process. Also nearby is the John Lopez “Life is Beautiful,” 2015 acrylic on panel relief in three shades of white. I was quite taken by its subtle execution: viewers must look hard to see the guns, artillery, and signs of war embedded around the empty words in the big white sign. Cricket purchased this right out of an undergraduate student art show at the New World School of the Arts, Miami’s visual and performing arts high school and college that is turning out top talent. This, along with Michael Tilson Thomas’s New World Symphony and music academy, was founded in 1987. The new symphony building with state of the art indoor and outdoor performance spaces exemplifies how Miami’s arts and culture have grown since 2001.

3. Roxy Paine. “Amarita Virosa Wall #4”, 2001. Thermoset plastic, stainless steel, lacquer oil.

 

The pool area has some impeccably-installed large sculpture. The newest addition is Alan Sonfist’s “Fallen Limbs Rising,” 2015, an aluminum recreation of the hotel’s fallen tree branches with a time capsule containing seeds from endangered species buried beneath it. To its right, on a high ledge, Robert Chambers’ “Rotorelief,” 2002 seems ready to take off as its white body with spiraling black and white propeller on top seem part of the hotel’s white façade. On a ledge to the left, Cuban artist Jose Bediá’s sculpture “The Journey,” 2005, poses a man rowing from Cuba in water as if the boat were a paper airplane, representing the idea of movement and the fantasy of flying away. Sculptures on two sides of the pool include “Benchmark,” 2007 by Jane Manus that also doubles as a seating area, and the 10”-tall “Walkie Talkie, 1982,” by David Stoltz; the stainless steel sculpture represents a musical note that seems to be walking.

Jose Bedia, The Journey, 2005. 1.8” Powder coated aluminum (terra cotta color)

 

The Cricket Taplin Collection is notable for combining humor and gravitas to point to issues related to culture and nature. Other artists in the collection include Cerith Wyn Evans, Christine Borland, Elliot Erwitt, Garry Winogrand, Michele Oka Donner, Massimo Vitali, Jason Rhoades, Tony Oursler, Olafur Eliasson, Russell Crotty, Ebony G. Patterson, and Kathleen Graves.

Cricket Taplin began her curatorial career learning from and working with Martin Z. Margulies. Her husband Marty Taplin and Martin Z. Margulies owned the Margulies Taplin Gallery for 10 years and Cricket began her apprenticeship with them in 1988.  In 1987 Marty Taplin bought the Sagamore hotel. Because of 9/11, the first Art Basel was cancelled and Cricket, Marty Taplin, and Martin Margulies, together with all the museums in Miami decided to have a big brunch to celebrate the inaugural Art Basel.

David Stoltz, Walkie Talkie, 1983. Stainless steel.

 

“Putting the art on the walls of the hotel was scary and personal. People enjoyed it, and it’s been a great experience,” Cricket related. “The media coined the name ‘Art Hotel’ because it’s a private and personal collection. And that became our moniker. We also have 3 TV channels in the rooms dedicated to video art. One channel has video selections from EAI – Electronic Art Intermix. Another channel has interviews with Miami artists and collectors. We also host special performances and events; Will Ryman, Massimo Vitali, Olaf Breuning, Pablo Cano, Spencer Tunick, and Yoko Ono have participated, to name a few. Art in the hotel makes people less intimidated about going into galleries and art spaces. I’m proud that we were the first ones to change attitudes about art: buy what you love, what you respond to. Don’t worry about the market.”

By Jan Garden Castro

[i] “Globe Miami Island,” Bass Museum, reviewed in Sculpture, April, 2003.

Joel Allen, “Blood Bloom”. Courtesy of the artist.

Each fall in Grand Rapids, Michigan, nearly half a million people attend ArtPrize, the city’s immensely popular public art fair.  The fair itself is brief, spanning just a few weeks, but for months afterwards museums throughout the state serve as venues for afterglow exhibitions, showcasing highlights gleaned from the event.  Through mid-March, visitors to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts can see a thoughtfully paired trio of ArtPrize artists in the exhibition Suspended!, which, like ArtPrize itself, is a crowd-pleasing, whimsical show.  The works and artistic aims of Joel Allen, Russel Prather, and Irene LaVon Walker may initially seem quite divergent, but they actually have much in common, besides, of course, that they all seem to defy gravity.   

All their work is ethereal to some degree, but none more so than Russell Prather’s.  His working method is simple yet clever: he tactfully paints acrylic crimson circles on successive layers of transparent polyester film, which he then carefully aligns and suspends on strings.  From the side, we see almost nothing, but as we step around to the front, three dimensional spherical and ovoid forms magically materialize out of thin air.  These forms are transient; as we keep moving around, they disappear. His works beg to be viewed from all sides, very effectively encouraging viewer interaction.

Artist: Joel Allen, “Hooked on Svelte”. Photo Credit: Brian Mosher, courtesy of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

 

Irene LaVon Walker attains a similarly ethereal effect with her work.  A textile artist, she creates garments that are more sculptural than functional.  Stylistically, they somehow manage to simultaneously straddle the categories of punk and Middle-Earth Elvish.  Her vaporous forms, like Prather’s works, suspend from the air.  Some seem to be inhabited by invisible bodies, but others seem ready to dematerialize like wisps of dark smoke.

Artist: Irene LaVon Walker: “Dress #1” Photo Credit: Brian Mosher, courtesy of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

 

Joel Allen also works in fiber, but in other varied media as well.  His lyrical Hooked on Svelte series seeks to give tangible form to “the way thoughts feel.” His hand-woven fabrications incorporate massive amounts of fiber, and they look something like suspended foliage from another planet.  The monumental and visually striking Blood Bloom incorporates eight miles of knotted fiber and other media, requiring both floors of the KIA’s two-story exhibition space for proper display.  The floral heads of Blood Bloom seem to dissolve into liquid streams of cascading red and white strands.  Though there’s more substance (in a literal sense) to his works than that of LaVon Walker and Prather, they signify the world of thought, something completely immaterial.

There’s something curiously entrancing about watching something float, be it a bubble or a cloud, which is perhaps where much of this exhibition’s appeal lies, each body of work seemingly defying the gravitational laws that keep us earthbound.  These works are all visually compelling and playful, wholly unburdened by the weight of pretention, bringing to mind G. K. Chesterton’s endearing quip that “angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

Artist: Russell Prather Title: “Cavity”. Photo Credit: Katie Houston, courtesy of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts

 

Suspended! Is on view at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts until March 13.  Six of Joel Allen’s Hooked on Svelte pieces will be on view in the travelling exhibition State of the Art (February 18 through May 29), which launches at the Minneapolis Art Institute.

By Jonathan Rinck

Hugo Aveta, “Síntomas, la imagen sin nombre” Instalación, año 2015.
Medidas: 4 caras de 5 mts de largo X 6,20 mts de alto.

Hugo Aveta sorprende con la instalación que presenta en la galería El Gran Vidrio en la ciudad de Córdoba. Un trabajo que apunta al tan popular tema de la memoria, porque hoy más que nunca, pareciera que el tema de conservar, proteger y respetar la memoria, se ha transformado en un must dentro del arte contemporáneo.

Hugo Aveta, “Síntomas, la imagen sin nombre” Instalación, año 2015. Medidas: 4 caras de 5 mts de largo X 6,20 mts de alto.

 

Un enorme cubo formado por 3 líneas de 7 puertas que se superponen, atrapan en su centro hueco una suerte de biblioteca la cual, quedando inaccesible, veda la posibilidad de ser abordada, eso a simple vista. Presenciamos una estructura que transforma su contenido de millones de palabras en un contenido silencioso y mudo en tanto las puertas lo encierren. Ya desde su obra fotográfica, Hugo Aveta muchas veces trabaja con el concepto de los espacios que invitan y seducen desde lo estético y desde el silencio que proponen las imágenes; el espectador queda suspendido en un ámbito que lo integra en su discurso, lo hace trabajar activamente sobre la lectura de los detalles para dar vida a esos espacios solitarios. Esa calma aparente se transforma en tensión ante lo desconcertante, ante los ruidos propios de la imagen que remiten a elecciones claramente estéticas pero también son registro de una historia. Desde sus fotografías, donde las maquetas recrean situaciones posibles -verosímiles pero no reales-, hasta las instalaciones donde los espacios habitables parecen anularse, como en este caso donde el “cuarto de lectura” inaccesible se transforma en paradójico, el artista juega con los indicios, los esconde, demanda que el espectador deje su tiempo frente a la obra y se integre a la experiencia para vivirla porque a simple vista, al paso, nada pareciera “salir de lo normal”. El choque con el cubo formado por puertas provoca la reacción logica y automática ante una puerta: la pregunta sobre lo que hay detrás y la intención de abrirla. Puertas que dan acceso a un espacio impensado donde los libros se apilan, se almacenan, condensan la mayor cantidad información posible, como si fuese el alma de la obra guardando tesoros a descubrir. Y que podrían estar allí por siempre en tanto las puertas permanezcan cerradas, como si la opción fuese únicamente nuestra, decidir entrar o no, saber o permanecer en las tinieblas de la ignorancia, alejados del conocimiento y los recuerdos.

Hugo Aveta, “Síntomas, la imagen sin nombre” Instalación, año 2015. Medidas: 4 caras de 5 mts de largo X 6,20 mts de alto.

 

La curadora Adriana  Carrizo, habla del síntoma para rever lo que se ha conservado por bueno o malo, aquello que denuncia la falla. La instalación plantea una propuesta de búsqueda, distintas capas de lectura de una obra que se nos presenta imponente y desafiante y ya con eso sería suficiente para abrir los interrogantes.  Pero si la curiosidad nos guía y apuntala -aliada fundamental frente a las obras contemporáneas- como espectadores podemos dar un paso más y comprometer el cuerpo: decidir meterse,  literalmente, en la experiencia,  transitar un espacio que condensa el tiempo, retiene información pero donde no se invalida, sino todo lo contrario, que se libere del silencio aquello que se quiera. Esa falla, eso que se destaca, es lo que transita entre la delgada línea del querer ver o no, del saber o no. Aveta plantea esa posibilidad y deja las puertas abiertas – o cerradas – a quien quiera. La obra es tanto auto referencial como de cada uno que la mire y se cuestione frente a ella, cuántas puertas tenemos en nosotros que dan acceso o clausuran espacios desconocidos, o quizás por tan “reconocidos”, se los conserva bajo siete llaves. La puerta como bisagra entre esos espacios intermedios que decidimos por momentos habitar o desconocer.

Hugo Aveta, “Síntomas, la imagen sin nombre” Instalación, año 2015. Medidas: 4 caras de 5 mts de largo X 6,20 mts de alto.

 

Bio: Nacido en Córdoba, Argentina en 1965, Aveta fue ganador del Primer Premio de Honor Salón Artes Visuales 2002 Republica Argentina. Sus obras han sido expuestas en las Bienales de Arte: Fin del Mundo (Argentina), Photoquai (Francia), Mercosur y Curitiba (Brasil); Museos, instituciones y galerías de Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Rosario, Salta en Argentina, Uruguay, Francia, Brasil, Paraguay, Perú, Colombia, México, USA, Alemania, España,  Holanda, Suiza. Se destacan sus muestras: “Migrantes en el arte contemporáneo”, Museo Inmigrantes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, “Fracas”, Artnest, Suiza y “Sintomas, la imagen sin nombre”, muestra individual que presenta en El Gran Vidrio, Còrdoba, Argentina. Sus obras son parte de las colecciones del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Museo Emilio Caraffa, Museo Evita, Córdoba, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Rosario, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Salta, Argentina; Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay; Museo Quai Branly, Paris, FNAC (Fondo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo), así como colecciones privadas.

La muestra se puede ver hasta el 15 de Marzo de 2016 en El Gran Vidrio-Ecke, Ciudad de Córdoba.

Maria Carolina Baulo

Image by snarlingbunny at pixabay.com

“It’s just a room full of dirt,” says a man coming down the stairs as we go up to the second floor of a non-descript building at 141 Wooster Street. Good–then it’s still there. As if Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room would suddenly be gone, after existing inside this SoHo apartment space since 1977.

I try to go to the The New York Earth Room every time I’m in New York City, and bring along whomever will come with me. “Just a room full of dirt” is not the easiest sell in a city full of art, but it is also free, and that often turns people around. Additionally, explaining that there has been an apartment in SoHo knee-deep in dirt for nearly forty years often tips the curiosity factor. I tell people if they haven’t been, they should at least see it.

image by russavia at wikimedia.org

 

But the spectacle value of the sculpture is only the first few inches of this dark, heavy, fertile work. This was not the first time that De Maria filled a room with just dirt–two previous Earth Rooms were created, both in Germany. During the same period the artist completed a number of monumental works that combined precision with nature. The precise technological constraints of work like Vertical Earth Kilometer, in which a kilometer-long rod was inserted into the earth, The Lightning Field, in which rods are distributed precisely across a field in New Mexico, and Broken Kilometer, a series of rods places very precisely on the floor of another SoHo space–all required precision manufacturing and technical expertise to install and maintain. Fill a room with dirt may seem like a departure from these works, but if anything, it might be more technical.

image by Retis at flickr.com

 

The room is filled with 250 cubic yards of earth–enough to fill 25 dump trucks. The dirt was chosen specifically for its color and texture, sourced mostly in Pennsylvania, although it was mixed with other sources. But some of the real artistry has taken place as the sculpture has persisted. As it turns out, SoHo apartments aren’t designed to hold 280,000 pounds of dirt, and architectural renovation and repair has been necessary to keep the floor holding it up. The moisture affects the structure, as well as the weight. But this moisture is a part of the sculpture, and is maintained by the caretaker, Bill Dilworth, who has been responsible for the Earth Room for 26 years. He waters and rakes the sculpture weekly–otherwise the dirt would compress and dry out.

This moisture is one of the most overwhelming sculptural aspects to the work, for me. I have never visited another indoor work that I could smell and feel on my skin as I ascended the stairs to go see it. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and earthy, loamy, wet scents are common here. Scents are overwhelmingly common in New York City as well–but wet earth is not one of them. The Earth Room doesn’t smell like a forest, or even a natural space, but it smells of irreducible combination. I can smell dusty, old New York building paint, the smell of service elevators, and on a wet day, the unique stench of Manhattan rain. But additionally, I can smell moist dirt. I have perhaps never seen a space so permanently altered by sculptural work as The New York Earth Room. Not by opposing the phenomena of nature with those of the city, but by using both as artistic medium, a hard line between them confronting the viewer, as they stand looking at a just a room full of dirt: and just that precisely, for the past forty years.

By Adam Rothstein

Heman Chong, Monument to the people we’ve conveniently forgotten (I hate you). Offset prints on 300 gsm paper, approximately 1 million copies, each measuring 9×5.5 cm, 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Wilkinson Gallery

Born in Malaysia, and currently based in Singapore, An Arm, A Leg and Other Stories now showing at South London Gallery is the first major showing of artist and writer Heman Chong in the United Kingdom. Chong’s approach is engagingly multidisciplinary, and for this new exhibition his work includes elements of sculpture and installation, performance, image and text. SLG put the notion of dialogue and interaction at the forefront of their program, evidenced in particular by the wide array of events and workshops which often accompany their regular exhibition program. Chong’s massive installation in the central exhibition space, alongside his intervention in the gallery bookshop and the creation of an informal residency program as part of the overall project deliver exactly that, opening up multiple opportunities to relate and respond through different facets of the work.

Primary perhaps to the overall experience of the exhibition is Monument to the people we’ve conveniently forgotten (I hate you), consisting of a million blacked out business cards spread out across the gallery space. Business cards typify the very notion of exchange and carry the suggestion of continued dialogue and collaboration, while their colouring here (to say nothing of the title) hint at the ease with which the gesture can prove to be hollow. In this work as with many of the others, Chong seems to carefully avoid finishing the idea, and where a more explicit criticism could be made, it feels like he instead opts to pose a question. While a much darker reading of the work could easily be extrapolated upon, instead I found children running through the space, sliding into piles of cards and burying their friends under them. It’s a perfect example of how the rich undertones of his work direct the conversation into the realm of possibility over outright critique, a sense of exploration even children seem ready to participate in wholeheartedly.

Heman Chong, Monument to the people we’ve conveniently forgotten (I hate you). Offset prints on 300 gsm paper, approximately 1 million copies, each measuring 9×5.5 cm, 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Wilkinson Gallery

 

Central to this mode of action is a sign on the wall reading This Pavilion Is Strictly For Community Bonding Activities Only, a reproduction of one encountered by Chong in a public space in Singapore. Its overbearing and authoritarian tone, dictating interaction almost at odds with the conventional or instinctive notion of ‘community’ acts as the perfect juxtaposition to Chong’s own much more open discourse. That sign can be read against virtually every other aspect of the exhibition, framing the idea of open dialogue in a way which almost boarders on site-sensitive, and directly working against the dictated tone of the plaque.

Heman Chong, Robinson Crusoe / Daniel Defoe (4). Acrylic
on canvas, (46x61x3.5 cm). Signed and dated verso, Unique,
2014. Courtesy of the artist and Wilkinson Gallery

 

Opposite the sign is a collection of paintings from three separate series: Cover (Versions), Things That Remain Unwritten and Emails from Strangers. They include a collection of book titles with abstract or semi geometric images as their covers, printed spam emails and other abstracted designs, which are described in the exhibition text as referencing the “unavoidable association, however intangible, between simultaneous visitors to the gallery space.” The texts can also be read as being representative of a kind of list for ‘further reading,’ something you might find at the end of a discussion or a lecture. It helps cement the idea of multiple voices and broadens the notion of exchange to include things outside of the gallery space. This is emphasised by Inclusion(s), a kind of muted intervention in the gallery book shop where second hand copies of books have been collected together to be redistributed, adding a tangible dimension to the idea of reading further into the exhibition and its multifaceted points of interest from beyond the walls of the gallery.

Another piece in the main gallery space called Surfacing, consisting of thousands of small red triangle stickers, offers the opportunity for Chong to take the mantra of collaboration and exchange into the installation process of the exhibition itself. The work has been realised several times already, and allows the gallery technicians to read from a loose set of instructions and piece it together within certain parameters. It’s reappearance serves a similar function to the works featuring books, in that they acknowledge in their construction the existence of multiple view points and perspectives, essentially creating a space where no one approach is privileged, even the artist’s own.

The final work in that central space is created through the sculptural intervention Rope, Barrier, Boundary, which uses the ubiquitous red velvet rope barrier used in galleries and museums to create space around works to demarcate a performance area at the far end of the room. Each Wednesday at 1pm and 5pm a performance entitled An Arm, A Leg will take place where a different participant will be taught to memorise and recite a 500 word short story written by Chong and only ever passed on by word of mouth. It ties the threads of the artist’s work as a writer and his focus on text and story together and cements the space as a whole as one of exchange and dialogue. Those wishing to take part in the performance are encouraged by the gallery to make contact via email.

Heman Chong, Index (Down). from the series Surfacing,
2009. 3000 self-adhesive stickers applied directly onto wall.
Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Wilkinson
Gallery, London

 

The exhibition also includes a further collaborative element with three writers, Mira Mattar and the pair of Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams (themselves collaborators on a project called Diego Garcia, described as a ‘novel-in-installments’ [diegogarciabook.tumblr.com]). Effectively a separate commission, Writing, Rooms is kind of residency based on the first floor of the gallery, where Mattar and the duo of Soobramanien and Williams will work on their own writing projects, allowing them to continue to develop works already in progress alongside Chong’s own exhibition. At the end of the residency they have been invited to host a public conversation about the experience and also to publish an excerpt of what they have produced during that time.

While the exhibition could easily have felt dense and the central space somehow overcrowded by Chong multiple works and sites of exchange, in actual fact the way it is installed somehow beautifully brings the whole project together. The space is large enough that even with so much happening on the walls, floors and up high towards the ceiling in the case of Surfacing, there is still enough opportunity to view each work individually. There are elements to the main installation work which may instinctively invoke an association with minimalism (the cold supremacist black of the business cards recalling the kind of sculptural approach that might seem relatable to Richard Serra as an example), however it feels more fitting to view the whole as a much more intricately crafted maximalist totality. While the previous exhibition at SLG, Thomas Hirschhorn’s incredible In-between transformed the space into something altogether unique and different, Chong has managed to pack the space while still retaining elements of its location, something which eloquently reflects his attitude to creating space for dialogue rather than dominating it. The effect is both thoroughly engaging and inescapably uplifting.

By Will Gresson

Exhibition view with Haus-Rucker-Co’s “Mind Expander”(1968) in foreground.

The pejorative use of “hippie” has long been the strategy of ad hominem attacks by social and political opponents of the American 1960’s and 70’s counterculture. Labeled as a slacker culture based on love and peace, donning tie-dye with starry, LSD infused eyes is the stock mental picture that still hangs over the era like the cloud of pot smoke. Beside this image, there was a new social movement and great music that remains a holdfast to the collective reality of the decades.

Prevalent art movements at the time included Minimalism, Pop, Op, Land, Conceptual and Land art, which shared values of the time albeit it in their seemingly disparate genres. Sociopolitical and eco-technological principles in combination with a heightened exploration of human perception made for a radical shift in art, design and architecture. Andrew Blauvelt, new director of the Cranbrook Art Museum and former curator at the Walker Art Center has compiled an extensive collection of information of this art and design from international sources to exhibit in Hippie Modernism: The Struggle For Utopia.

Steve Baer

 

Throughout the exhibition communal efforts are seen as a pragmatic, intuitive and political methodologies in achieving the goals of the era. A substantial amount work from the design collective, Haus-Rucker-Co, highlights ideas from perception-shifting headgear to inflatable architecture. Robert Mandones’ Instant City is a video documenting the meeting of young minds off the coast of Spain in 1971 as they work together to create a temporary city. American efforts include California-based Merry Pranksters, the sexual revolution of the Cockettes, and later, documentation of Ant Farm’s Truckstop Network sojourn to New England with their “truckitecture” to demonstrate an early precedent of social media. Superstudio collective of several Italian artists who focused on Orwellian thoughts of negative utopias set in play by consumerist culture and escapism in a sci-fi role.

Newly developed computer-based technology and the promise of democratization through mass production was at the forefront of the era. With the endless possibilities the act of expanding the mind and abilities of perception seems an inherent parallel through not only art, but science, especially as the international race for the moon proved to be a major influence in popular culture. Technology has always contained the dream of a fast track to utopia and whether it was in idealistic goals or use of portable sound and video media, nothing appears to be left unexplored in the exhibition.

Inside Ken Isaacs’s The Knowledge Box (1962/2009)

 

Prophetic statements are found throughout as is the influence on contemporary art. Ettore Sottsass’ lithographs illustrate surreal designs for future architecture not far from Roden Crater or The City. In 1962 Ken Isaacs’ The Knowledge Box offered a glimpse into current visual language culture bombarded with 24/7 media coverage and the Internet. Viewers are dosed with images from floor to ceiling with still images accompanying sound bites from the time in Isaacs’ box. Peter Cook’s Info-Gonks were 1968’s version of Google Glass, but designed for educational purposes rather than business or pure entertainment.

Among other possibilities was the sudden dissemination of information and much of the exhibit was dedicated to new approaches to education, sustainability and the interchange with everyday life. Stereotypical screenprinted music posters are on display, but show the masterful quality and investigation of design and color theory. Writing and art from the Black Panthers, feminism, the Whole Earth Catalogue and  Blueprint for Counter Education to Amsterdam’s anarchical Provo movement are an overwhelming source of information that is well-documented in the exhibition catalogue, a must read for a substantial understanding.

Emory Douglas’s full-page posters from the Black Panther newspaper, 1969–1974.

 

Blauvelt loosely organized Hippie Modernism into three categories around Timothy Leary’s line “Turn on, Tune in, Drop out” and it fits well as a mantra of the times. It works well. What the exhibition does the best, with prescient physicality, is demonstrate that the era of freethinking expansion of so many individual and cultural facets wasn’t all pipedream. Here that the core values of the American 1960’s and 70’s are still a driving force of politics, culture, art and design of today.

Hippie Modernism: A Struggle For Utopia is scheduled to travel from to Cranbrook Art Museum from June 19–October 9, 2016 and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, February 8–May 21, 2017.

By Jake Weigel

Carry On, 2015. Flour, plaster, water, yeast, sugar, salt, oil, bowls, towels, timers, tools, cupboard.
Image courtesy of Lisa Walcott

In her exhibition Living with Myself, kinetic sculptor Lisa Walcott gives concrete form to abstract  sensations (as abstract as, say, the feeling one gets after eating).  There’s a limit to the amount of abstract information that a sculpture can deliver, and Walcott bravely pushes its capacity to the limit.  But, as personal and elusive as some of these sculptures are, they possess sufficient humor, wit, and visual appeal to engage the viewer, even without the helpful explanatory cards on the wall. 

Her show comprises two floors of the Grand Rapids Urban Institute of Contemporary Art (UICA), a very chic five-story exhibition space with a crisp urban feel.  The space (and the art within) deserves more traffic than it presently gets.  Walcott’s exhibition is part of the UICA’s series Coming Home, which presents the work of both emerging and established Michigan artists.  In Something of Myself, Walcott mostly uses the banal stuff of the domestic interior to articulate the sometimes conflicting sensations that domesticity may evoke.

Her kinetic installation Made Up is unmissable, filling a large gallery with about a dozen round tables, each perpetually spinning around a pivot, their tablecloths gracefully twirling like dresses.  Walcott describes the whimsical work as suggesting “the imaginative side of daily life—perhaps a coping mechanism.”  A coping mechanism for what, exactly, she doesn’t say.  But the repetition and monotony of her kinetic sculptures that fill the next floor gently hint at an answer.

These works evoke indefatigable routine, a motif Walcott wittily alludes to even in the palindromic titles she gives some of her works (On and On, for example, or Do To Do).  Her sculptures move with the predictably and regularity of the interminable hands on a clock: a pull-chain light switch is perpetually tugged on and off as if by an invisible hand; an animated pile of blankets seems to inhale and exhale (rising and falling, rather eerily); a doorknob slowly turns, never stopping.   Even a suspended diaphanous white curtain which initially seems to freely blow with the air currents is, on closer inspection, subject to an elaborate but hidden apparatus which slowly tugs at its hem, animating its movements in the same manner that strings govern the motion of a marionette.

Carry On is a time-based installation for which Walcott assembled a sort of kitchen within the gallery, replete with a small table upon which sits sugar, salt, and flower.  Throughout the show (but off site), Wolcott continues to make dough, which she then stashes in this makeshift kitchen, marking the passage of time with these floury “bloated tick-marks for time passed.”  Nearly a dozen kitchen timers on the table underscore the redundancy of the task of making daily bread.

Something of Myself (installation photo). Image courtesy of Lisa Walcott

 

Because of the introspective nature of this exhibit, some information gets lost in translation.  But viewers will surly identify with the notion of the monotony of the daily grind.  However, Walcott isn’t a prisoner in the home; her works treat the repetition of domesticity with ambivalence.  After all, the motion of her whimsically dancing tables and gently moving curtain is, though predetermined and mechanized, never boring.  On the contrary, she seems to find a certain beauty in the mundane.

Carry On will be on view at the UICA through early February, but Lisa Wolcott’s work can still be seen at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts (Michigan) from February 26-April 17, and at Elon University (North Carolina) from March 14-April 15.

Lisa Walcott’s website contains additional images and video of her kinetic works: http://lisawalcott.com/

More information on the Grand Rapids UICA can be found here: http://www.uica.org/

By Jonathan Rinck

Wendell Castle Remastered. Courtesy of Friendman Benda and the artist; photo by Matt Wittmeyer.

Art is meant to be viewed, but furniture is meant to be touched. A space is defined by its appearance, but we are always in physical contact with the edges of space as well, with the walls and floors. Furniture is like an inside-out building. Whereas buildings contain us within them, furniture holds us suspended around itself like orbiting moons, as our fingers trace the surface of tables, as we sit on chairs and our legs slide under desks, and our hands reach up to shelves and into drawers. We appreciate the appearance of furniture on the pages of catalogs or on the showroom floor, but it isn’t until our paths intersect with the pieces in daily life that we begin to understand their nuances, the finer aspects of their design and construction that make them more than sculpture, but interactive shapings of space.

Scribe’s Stool, 1961- 62. Wendell Castle. See below for full image credits.

 

And so it was with a frustrated desire to touch that I merely viewed the Wendell Castle Remastered exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design. Wendell Castle’s extraordinarily cantilevered chairs and desks, and the fine finishing of the wood-laminate work just begs to be experienced with hands and body–to be sat on, to be used as a surface for writing, eating, or simply to place one’s weight upon, to be used as the outer boundaries of one’s existence.

Pieces like Scribe’s Stool walk the fine line between artistic sculpture and functional furniture. Anyone who has ever picked up a pen would likely be interested to see how their writing pose is shaped while sitting in this stool. Table-Chair-Stool combines multiple functions in one long branch, and the fine scratches I could make out along the seat was a taunt that the piece was actually made as furniture, and others had enjoyed the privilege to use it as such. Perhaps Serpentine Floor Lamp was the only piece that was actually in use in the exhibit, as it was equipped with a light bulb and switched on, reminding the viewer of the non-physical functional aspects of furniture as well. Walnut Sculpture was one of the several pieces of pure sculpture in the exhibition, having that redundant information in its title to remind us of the difference. But the instinct was the same upon viewing it–I wanted to reach out and let my hand trace its surfaces, to feel how it might shape space in the same way, as an appliance in space, not just as decoration.

Installation view of ‘Wendell Castle Remastered,’ 2015. Photo by Butcher Walsh. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design.

 

The show is a retrospective, reflecting upon the range of Castle’s work from the 1960s through today, and how the artist’s own touch upon the work has changed. Whereas the early work was sculptured from stacks of laminated wood entirely with hand tools, now Castle primarily uses computer-controlled routing machines as well as 3D modeling software to create his weight defying constructions. As he explains in a documentary film projected in the exhibition, as he gets older, his ability to use a chisel for hours on end is lessened, but he has learned to use newly-developed software and fabrication machinery. Rather than a crutch or a compensation, these tools enable him to make new forms that wouldn’t have been possible earlier in his career. This triple evolution of artist, tool, and work is visible across the work in the exhibition, a natural growth, abundantly apparent in the aesthetic of the pieces, and inscrutably alluring. The intimate network reaches out to the viewer, begging them to step up and take part in this shaping of space, as user, if not creator. The definitional boundary between furniture and sculpture does not, in the end, matter. The quality of the pieces stem from this desire to interact. The work invites the viewer to step into its space, and absorb its qualities in as many dimensions as possible.

By Adam Rothstein

Top image: Table-Chair-Stool, 1968, Wendell Castle. Installation view, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Wendell Castle-Wandering Forms-Works from 1959-1979, October 19, 2012-February 24, 2013. Afromosia and African hardwoods. Table-Chair: 26-3/4 x 115-3/4 x 35 in. (67.9 x 294 x 88.9 cm) Stool: 16-5/8 x 16-1/4 x 14-5/8 in. (42.2 x 41.3 x 37.1 cm). Museum of Arts and Design, gift of the Johnson Wax Company, through the American Craft Council, 1977. Photo courtesy of Sherry Griffin/R & Company © Wendell Castle, Inc.

Material Effects, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2015, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

First impressions are seldom as striking as this.  Entering the exhibition space, it’s impossible not to be immediately drawn toward Red Day, an installation by Nigerian performance artist Jelili Atiku.  A row of mannequins wrapped head to toe in crimson fabric seem to contemplate the wall before them, upon which is messily scrawled menacing and cryptic messages in red ink that, from a distance, make the wall seem steaked with blood.  Paper haphazardly strewn about furthers the effect that we are approaching the scene of some prior violence.  Actually, these are the remnants of the performance that launched Materiel Effects, an exhibition of contemporary art from West Africa.  Hosted at East Lansing’s Broad Art Museum, it brings together a small but important group of socially conscious-artists whose work synthesizes traditional African attributes (including performance and costume) with the language of contemporary art. 

Material Effects, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2015, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

These diverse, multimedia works are unified in their exploration of the historical and material value of objects in an increasingly digital world.  One gallery features a massive installation, Post no Bill, by Ibrahim Mahama, for which the artist assembled massive patchwork curtains out of out of jute sacks, many still bearing the residue of their use.   These quilt-like curtains cling to the gallery’s counterintuitively angled walls, fully exploiting the possibilities offered by the Broad’s contorted gallery spaces.

Post no Bill references the effort involved in transporting raw commodities like coal or cocoa, calling attention to the physical labor involved behind what, in one form or another, eventually become the products that line the shelves of megastores far elsewhere.  This work derives from Mahama’s much larger installation at the 2015 Venice Biennale, for which the artist created a canyon out of jute sacks through which viewers could traverse.

Material Effects, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2015, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Jelili Atiku’s Red Day exposes the human toll of several hundred years of military conflicts and genocides that occurred (and continue to occur) globally.  It certainly works in the exhibition if we consider “material effects” to include more than simply commodities assigned a monetary value.  Scattered around the feet of mannequins bound in red fabric are many sheets of red paper, each recounting the death-tolls of violent conflicts across the globe.  Some, like the Second World War, are very familiar to us.  Others are perhaps less so, such as the comparatively recent genocides that occurred in Burundi, which claimed the lives of a quarter-million people.  Particularly with regard to the wars of colonization from the 17th-19th centuries, often motivated by access to commodities or natural resources, many of these sheets can be read almost as receipts detailing the human cost of goods acquired.

This installation began as a performance.  Atiku and others wrapped themselves in the costumes now worn by the mannequins and, during a performance that was both choreographed and, at times, spontaneous, scrawled on the gallery walls words and phrases that described what war meant to them.   In the Red is the “residue” from this performance.

Material Effects, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2015, photo courtesy Eat Pomegranate Photography

 

Most of the works in the exhibit are not this heavy handed.  Otobong Nkanga’s Contained Measures of a Kolanut, for example, is an engaging and informative display that traces the mythology, cultivation, history, and modern uses of the kola nut (it’s the very same, ubiquitous “cola” that flavors soft drinks).  The artifacts in the display were originally meant to be set in motion by the artist herself, who engages with viewers in person during performances, even encouraging visitors to taste one while she discusses their history.  In the artist’s absence, the display (consisting of many cards with infographics and some actual kola nuts) still remains interesting and informative.

The ideas this exhibition raises are interesting and important.  Process and product seem increasingly separated from each other; these artists encourage us to think about where our commodities actually come from, and under what circumstances.  When we consider the material effects that we purchase (particularly anything in the garment or chocolate industry, for example), how aware are we of the true cost in labor and in life involved in bringing these items so affordably to the shelf?    Perhaps one good way to assign value to anything (whether material or otherwise) is to follow the advice of Thoreau, who wrote that “I count the cost of a thing in terms of how much of life I have to give [and perhaps we should add “take”] in order to obtain it.”

More information on Material Effects, which runs through April 8, can be found here: http://broadmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/material-effects

By Jonathan Rinck

Foreground: Jesus Morolas’ “Spirit Fountain” Texas Pink Granite. 2006

One of the most irresistible sensations in any museum is the ability to touch the art. In the Geroge and Milly Rhodus Sculpture and Sensory Garden of the Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, Texas, touching is not even optional. Then there are sounds and the scents from native flora.

Perhaps the most popular features of the Sensory Garden is Spirit Fountain by the late Texan artist, Jesus Moroles. The sculpture is a quietly unassuming column of undulating curves carved out of Texas pink granite. A water feature sends water softly along the curves to the base with a calming sound. The sculpture was donated by the Citizens of the Permian Basin in 2006, the 20th anniversary of the Ellen Noel Art Museum.

Danville Chadbourne “Memory of the Dimensional Path” Stoneware and stone. 2007-2009

 

Moroles has two other prominent sculptures in the garden. To produce a sound, Musical Stele (2001) has slots cut at exact intervals in the black granite. Visitors can use their hands to run down the smooth-edged granite to manipulate the sound much like a vertical xylophone. Portal, a large relief sculpture mounted to a wall, is constructed of thousands of small pieces of granite in the impression of a door. The rough texture of granite is much more pronounced in the work that was commissioned by the Ellen Noel Art Museum.

The variation of textures, abstraction and materials found with the remaining sculptures allows visitors a strong tactile experience. Carmelo Cappello, Marino Mazzacurati, Victor Salmones, Emelio Greco and Rosalind Cook are among the artists represented in the Sensory Garden with other opportunities for temporary art.

Jesus Morolas “Portal” Fredricksburg Granite. 1990

 

Native plants have been selected based on scent, texture or the ability to attract butterflies and are continually rotated throughout the seasons. Purple fall asters, flowering kale, winecups and lamb’s ear are among those plants that induce a strong visceral sensation, while adding fresh, bright colors. Rosemary, chocolate daisies, winecups basil, mint and pansies are among the many flowers that add strong scents to the garden and visitors. Small trees add another feature of sound and the awareness of temperature through movements between sun and shade.

Opening in its current state in 1998, with advising from the Texas Commission for the Blind, the Ector County Extension Service and Permian Basin Master Gardeners. As an expansion onto the original building, those involved worked with landscape architects to construct the raised garden beds and outlay of the outdoor space. Division of Blind Services, formerly the Texas Commission for the Blind, continues to use the garden for training as well as local schools and universities. Docents are trained with goggles to emulate a range of vision impairments.

The Sensory Garden is open during regular museum hours, Tuesday through Saturday from 10am – 5pm and Sundays from 2 – 5pm with free admission. More information at http://www.noelartmuseum.org

By Jake Weigel

See caption at the end of article.

Strange Pilgrims is a three part exhibition on view at the at the Jones Center, Laguna Gloria, and the Visual Arts Center in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin. Including Charles Atlas, Trisha Baga, Millie Chen, Phil Collins, Andy Coolquitt, Ayşe Erkmen, Roger Hiorns, Nancy Holt, Lakes Were Rivers, Angelbert Metoyer, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Paul Sharits, and Sofía Táboas, Strange Pilgrims is an ambitious show organized by the Contemporary Austin and curated by Senior Curator Heather Pesanti. Vigorously engaging with a breadth of experiential work ranging from video to installation, sculpture and more, Strange Pilgrims shrewdly connects both internationally recognized and emerging artists with critical histories to create an experimental yet tight web of context and discourse. Pairing with the Visual Arts Center (VAC), the Contemporary expanded into the university territory and thus a dialog with a new subset of viewers, University of Texas at Austin students. The director of the VAC, Jade Walker, generously shared her insights about the preparation process and the VAC’s role in its realization.

See caption at end of article.

 

About two years ago the Contemporary reached out to the VAC in planning for Strange Pilgrims. It felt like a great fit for many reasons, one of which being an exciting opportunity to work with a seasoned curator. The VAC often invites guest curators, ranging from curatorial fellows and students to faculty and VAC staff, but does not have a dedicated curatorial schema. During preliminary preparations for the exhibition, Walker accompanied Pesanti on several studio visits, including the studios of Tricia Baga and Sofía Táboas. “That was really a great inside track. Tricia Baga was an artist that I had on our list to do a VAC residency in the next couple of years and it was serendipitous when Heather showed me the first roster. [Baga] was someone that I thought our students would really like to have some time with. She is so young and has made such a splash in the art scene, I though it would be interesting for our students to see how a project like this could unfold”, said Walker. Having Baga as an artist in residence gave the opportunity for students to be involved with a part of her project for Strange Pilgrims.

See caption at end of article

 

An important part of the negotiation between institutions was the continuation of the artist in residence program at the VAC. Another integral aspect was student’s involvement in the creation of the catalog, the first of its kind coming from the Contemporary. The impressive catalog has essays and bios written by two PhD Art History candidates at UT Austin while Dr. Anne Reynolds contributed a long essay. Dr. Reynolds also generated the idea for the parallel symposium Experience In and Beyond the White Cube presented in November of 2015. Bringing together scholars and critics, as well as UT Austin faculty and students, the symposium was a platform for discussion around exhibiting and archiving time-based media and ephemeral work. Moderated by Walker, the symposium was an opportunity for the community to gain insight on the exhibition.

See caption at end of article.

 

In total, the collaboration between the VAC and the Contemporary has produced a strong and sprawling exhibition that challenges viewers while providing an unmatched educational experience for students. Strange Pilgrims is on view until January 24, 2016.

By Gracelee Lawrence

Captions from top to bottom: (1) Sofía Táboas, Floral Beginning in Circular Time (detail), 2015. Plastic tape, foam, fabric, marble, stone, clay lattice, earthenware and ceramic bricks, cement, wood, aluminum, copper, steel, glass, synthetic fiber, plaster, wax, resin, silicone, metal springs, artificial grass, adocreto, vinyl, wood veneer, brick, metal paint, metal coatings, vinyl tile, carpet, wire mesh, brass, type, enamel paint, sanding, PVC pipe, paper, acrylic, and hose. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, organized by The Contemporary Austin, on view at the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 2015. Artwork © Sofía Táboas. Courtesy the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons. (2) Charles Atlas, Institute for Turbulence Research (from Tornado Warning), 2008. Four-channel synchronized video projection, transparent screen, VMU, sound. Dimensions variable. Running time: 6:00. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, organized by The Contemporary Austin, on view at the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 2015. Artwork © Charles Atlas. Courtesy the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; and Vilma Gold, London. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons. (3) Ayşe Erkmen, 3DN, 2015. Textile installation. 27 feet x 40 feet 6 inches x 47 feet 4 inches. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, organized by The Contemporary Austin, on view at the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 2015. Artwork © Ayşe Erkmen. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons. (4) Trisha Baga, 4pm on a Sunday, 2015. Mixed media video installation. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, organized by The Contemporary Austin, on view at the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 2015. Artwork © Trisha Baga. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.