Joseph Kosuth, Neon, 1965

All images courtesy MACRO Rome.

MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, has filled its expansive Enel Hall with close to 70 illuminated works for its show Neon: the Luminous Matter of Art.  An exhibition dedicated solely to the use of neon, the show brings together 50 artists who have worked with the medium in contemporary practice. The sculptures, installations and textual works lay the art-historical framework for conceptual practice based on semiotics while also (more literally) paying homage to the medium’s origins as material for signage.

Delving into the past 50 years, on view are works by Dan Flavin, Joseph Kosuth, Tracy Emin, and Jason Rhoades, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Maurizio Cattelan, Spencer Finch, Dan Flavin, Claire Fontaine, Piero Golia, Douglas Gordon, Alfredo Jaar, Gyula Kosice, Mario Merz, François Morellet, Bruce Nauman and Keith Sonnier, among many others.

Bruce Nauman, Raw/War, 1970, MACRO Rome.

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All images courtesy Maccarone Gallery.

Currently on view at Maccarone New York is Hanna Liden‘s “Out of My Mind, Back in 5 Minutes.” The installation includes three photographs and several sculptures made from plastic shopping bags, t-shirts, and garbage bags. These items are stacked and filled with poured plaster or covered with latex, rendering them heavy and useless.

Loaded with references to memento mori and tribal customs, this process-based work transforms markers of the ephemerality and mundaneness of city life. It offers what the exhibition’s press release calls “a meditation on urbanity […] The result is a gallery space turned reliquary, containing the ghosts of an urban tribe now obsolete.”

More images and text after the jump… (more…)