Amatuers look for inspiration

Via the Pace Gallery Blog.

Li Songsong at Pace

These huge canvases with their impasto surfaces struck me as almost ugly at first: the colors, the quasi-photographic Gerhard Richter feel, the imagery. But by the time I left Pace these works by Chinese painter Li Songsong had not just grown on me, but wowed me.

I had a visceral reaction to the textured, thick application of paint.

The scale was humbling.

The imagery took on more context and nuance seen together, and the grids of color the images were reassembled in seemed less rigid and more poetic.

This one is incredibly layered both in the subdued pastel and sepia coloring and literally: As you can see below, the artist mounted separate metal panels and layered them on top of one another.

This canvas seems almost Impressionistic in the way it dabbles light through the trees. The subject, however, is anything but.

Up at Pace Gallery through August 5, and certainly worth a viewing this summer.

Richard Tuttle at Pace Gallery

Installation View

What's the Wind is a collection of seven new sculptures that artist Richard Tuttle calls 'systems,' and this description makes some sense after seeing the delicate balance of discrete, rough hewn elements. The disparity of parts adds some whimsy as do the simple colors and forms. Existing within the wooden platforms, the pieces create an environment almost like a ecosystem in a terrarium. I expected the parts to move like a Jean Tingley sculpture, but alas, they are frozen in a system that does not move, and is in fact dead. 

So what are these systems we are looking at? The press release describes them as "intensely self-referential," but perhaps we can deduce something by the helpfully descriptive names if not the works themselves.

System 4, Hummingbird, 2011

The title Hummingbird suggests a flurry of intense movement that turns into a blur of motion. Here we have a duct tape spire rising high over an internal core of small parts flanked by two enormous boards. Or, we have a long beak, small fat body, and two strong wings keeping the hummingbird afloat.

Detail of System 4, Hummingbird

The body of the sculpture is open, and these little circles and plinths seem to me like they should be free moving rather than fixed.

System 3, Measurement, 2011

Measurement has large, candy colored suspended balls hovering over a circle. Here the fixed structure works to create tension as the balls seem to defy gravity. I had the rather more unfortunate impression of a banana split melting into a waiting mouth. Off hand, I'd say the ice cream isn't going to fit in the "mouth" below, if that was what Tuttle was trying to measure.

Richard Tuttle's Whats the Wind up at Pace Gallery through July 22.

Tara Donovan's Pin Drawings at Pace

Drawing (Pins), 2010

While out for some openings in Chelsea last night, I noticed Pace had kept its doors open, so I got to take a close look at Tara Donovan's latest work. As always when I see her work in person, I love it. Her use of materials manages to be subtle and simple but transformative. I originally thought when I saw the press release that these were graphite drawings, but as you can see below, they are made by sticking pins into gatorboard.

Not only do the pins create line and shading, but there's a nice depth to the varying degrees of how deeply stuck the pins are. The pins themselves have a sheen to them, which picks up nicely in the light as you walk around them, and at 96" x 96" these large works leave some room to walk.

These pieces really don't reproduce well in photographs, so if you have the chance to get over to Pace before March 19, I recommend it. The circles drawings, like the first image, are my favorite, but most of the works are  clean and perfect gradients like these:

Kiki Smith at Pace Gallery

Lodestar, Kiki Smith's current show at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, features paintings on glass panels in black metal frames, arranged as a grouping that tells of the cycle of a woman's life. The images run from young to old to the encoffined, often posed alone or sitting. Images of a single tree and bare branch enhance the sense of isolation. The monochromatic palette has a milky glow and the etched and rough style creates an earthy rather than ethereal environment.


Certainly the grouping seen as a whole is more powerful than any one image. I wan't sure I liked Smith, but walking through this exhibition yesterday felt contemplative and rather touching. Perhaps this was merely because there were few people around on a Wednesday morning, but I greatly enjoyed having the run of the place and appreciated her work the better for it. Lodestar runs concurrently with Smith's exhibition Sojourn at the Brooklyn Museum, but only through June 17--so hurry if you want to catch it.