Thinking...

Rodin, The Thinker, Philadelphia

It's one of those days.

Did you know it was originally called The Poet?

Carlos Garaicoa: White on White

Photo-topography, Carlos Garaicoa.  Galleria Continua at the Armory Show 2012.

It looked like styrofoam in person, but apparently artist Caralos Garaicoa transferred photographs to polyspan (I suspect a material a lot like styrofoam) to create these white images.

Garaicoa is a Cuban artist who tends to explore Cuba's identity and politics through its buildings. These archetectural scenes were clearly composed, but the precision of them crumbles away as you look closer.

Bottle caps, paintbrushes, and nails: Will Ryman

 

Will Ryman, of roses fame, had new work up at Paul Kasmin in Chelsea in a show that just ended. My first impression as I walked into the gallery of the large figure wrapping around the room was that it was like a large Buddha in a temple. However, this large plaster head doesn't look nearly as serene, his blue t-shirt is surfaced with sneakers, and his glittering arms are made of bottle caps. Lots and lots of bottle caps. Everyman is like a Bart Simpson version of the Buddha.

Going under the statue's head, the viewer walks into a new environment, a labyrinth created with high vertical stacks of paintbrushes. Like the shoes and bottle caps, there are some great textures being created here. I wish these environments came through better in photographs. The windings go nowhere in particular and turn you back around to the sleeping (dying?) figure in the next gallery.

Around the corner, a third new work by Ryman, one more suited the public display like his roses were, presides over Kasmin's new exhibition space. Bird is made up of real and fabricated steel nails, some of them enormous.

I became more than a little fascinated by the size of the nails, and the hollow interior of the structure. The materials Ryman uses in all these installations never lose their original identity, the way the materials used by Tara Donovan do. Instead, their existence as bottle caps or paintbrushes or nails never gets lost even as through multiplication and shaping they take new, bigger forms.

Marilyn [sic] Monroe according to Philippe Parreno

Marilyn Monroe, in preparation of a spiritual tension (5 parts) is a new work by Phillipe Parreno that was on view at the Armory at the Pilar Corrias Gallery. I typically don't think words are used well in art pieces, but these are an exception. These dreamy images were beautifully done.

The Algerian-born artist lives and works in France. There's a nice interview with Parreno from 2010 in the Guardian that discusses the enviorment-based works he more typically creates. Objects like these drawings are rarer for him, and he says that "'Art is filled with things that aren't so much objects but quasi-objects.' What are they then? 'Objects whose existence is dependent on their context'." These drawings still suggest an involved story without the extensive environment he sometimes creates.

I saw more examples of the artist's work on the Pilar Corrias website, including these (involving penguins):

We might be soulmates. ;)

Mirror, Mirror, Everywhere: Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe

Mirrors were everywhere at the art fairs (Yes, I realize this is a belated post. Life is crazy. For regular posting to begin soon, offer me an awesome full-time marketing job, please.)

This installation by Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe at Marlborough Chelsea's booth at the Armory was my favorite of all the mirrors though, for the textured surfaces of the mirrors created by a layered printing process. They appeared rather like abstract, naturalistic watercolors despite the medium.

I also appreciated the setting; the artists also designed the wallpaper behind the mirrors, which feature a fractal-like pattern. The duo notably also created a whole environment for Bright White Underground in 2010 (great photos of this on The Selby).

Chalk and Pins at the Armory

A different use of chalk as a medium at the Armory. I'm on the train to Philadelphia at the moment for a work conference, so just a quick post. Chalk and pins L, 2010 by Pascale Marthine Tayou was up at the Galleria Continua booth at the Armory. More about the artist on the gallery's website. By the way, if you have a reccomendation about where to get a Philly cheese steak sandwich near the city center area, please let me know!

Awesomeness: Jens Schubert at Volta

Whew, the art fairs have ended. I was laid low with a stomach bug for most of it, but I did get to catch a bit of Armory, SCOPE, and Volta (which was more than enough, thankyouverymuch). To begin with my new favorite: printermaker Jens Schubert was represented by Galerie Kleindienst in one of the solo-artist booths at Volta. These colorful, densely layered prints filled me with glee. I really enjoyed looking at them; I thought the compositions were fantastic and allusive; I even liked the planets, above, which are very much not my thing. In a word: awesome. Bonus points for the textured plastic floor you can make out in the photograph below.

"With the vivid and impasto variegation of his paintings, the striking forms and particularly with the repetition of motifs Schubert`s formal language sometimes reminds the viewer of folk art. Masks, animal motifs, floral and architectonic elements, as well as abstract ornaments are interwoven to puzzling and mythical figures. Not a realistic depiction or story telling is decisive, but the expression focuses on a strong emotional charge of the pictures. The prints are extremely complex. Either Schubert compiles varied motifs on one plate or he puts several layers above one another on his large size prints, so that different individual motifs form a new figure." -Volta website

Yinka Shinobare MBE at James Cohan Gallery

Yinka Shonibare MBE's has some new works up at James Cohen Gallery in Chelsea through March 24th, although what you see in the photos above are rather like the sides to the main dish hidden in the back. In the interior room, the video Addio del Passato is screened on the wall and the great soundtrack to it drifts back into the outer rooms.

The video features a black woman in African-print but traditional European-style clothes in some Roccoco European palace singing the opera Traviata. The storyline is that the character of Frances Nisbet, Lord Nelson’s estranged wife, sings an aria from the last act of Verdi’s Traviata, which dovetails into some of Shonibare's previous work in London about Lord Nelson. What Shinobare is interested in is the distance and irony between imperial Britain's history and the present as well as emotions like longing and passion. Honestly there is a lot going on in the video and his work in general, and I had do some more research. The short video below is some great background from Art 21.

 

Also on view in the gallery are his suicide portraits, reworkings of famous death portraits with the subjects wearing the African print cloth and the sex/fetish objects, with their historically accurate attributes also somewhat reworked by the artist. Shinobare uses the same fabric in all of these work because although we think of it as African, it is actually a Dutch reworking of Indonesian batiks.