Fred Wilson, Afro Kismet (Installation View), via Art Observed

Currently on view at Pace Gallery’s New York location, artist Fred Wilson has mounted his powerful exhibition Afro Kismet, reprising a work from the Istanbul Biennial that sought shared cultural threads and a refreshed cultural understanding of shared relationships between Africa and the Middle East. Continuing Wilson’s nuanced dialogues with both historical and cultural framing in conjunction with a studied view of both modern and deep history, the show’s trip to New York offers a second chance for viewers to see a challenging and important piece of work by the artist. Read More »

Voice of America (Installation View), via Gladstone

In 1975, Vito Acconci installed his now classic piece Voice of America at Portland Center for Contemporary Arts.  The piece was a love letter by way of a music lesson, according to the artist, an attempt at getting under the skin of the nation, and to speak to the inner spirit of the nation. “One kind of American music drifts into another: America presented in a music lesson, a geography lesson: from Ozark fiddle to California harmonica to New Orleans piano,” Acconci says. “My voice is the voice of a mythical Mr. America talking to Mrs. America: we’re giving voice to an American dream… There is a voice calling out from the wilderness, jabs of voice…here’s the response from the children of America.” Read More »

Julie Mehretu, A Love Supreme (2018), via Art Observed

Long time friends Tacita Dean and Julie Mehretu have teamed up for a unique exhibition concept at Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris month, a show that winds through a broad range of varied techniques in abstraction. Dean and Mehretu are presenting two new works emblematic of their respective practices: Suite of Nine, a series of chalk drawings on slate depicting a solar eclipse and A Love Supreme, a large painting in ink and acrylic on canvas. On the occasion of the exhibition, the two artists decided to create in parallel 45 monotypes each. Composed of 90 works covering the walls of the gallery’s lower level, the installation Monotype Melody (ninety works for Marian Goodman) reflects a unique bond shared by the artists.

Julie Mehretu and Tacita Dean (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Adrian Piper, A Synthesis of Intuitions (Installation View), via Art Observed

Considering the canon of the conceptual movement over the course of the 20th Century, the work of artist Adrian Piper figures in a particularly resonant and explosive way.  Working at the forefront of the conceptual project from the late 1960’s onwards, Piper’s work has long confronted and framed questions of race, identity and discrimination in ways that push the viewer into a deep, lasting engagement with concepts and structures of institutionalized racism. This mode of practice, and the artist’s gradual movements towards it over the course of her career sits at the core of her current career retrospective at MoMA, an exhibition that manages to frame the artist’s work historically and socially, while using its conceptual payload to push the viewer into that same sense of identification.

Adrian Piper, A Synthesis of Intuitions (Installation View), via Art Observed

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Math Bass, Newz! (2018), via Mary Boone

Currently on view at Mary Boone Gallery’s 745 Fifth Ave space, artist Math Bass has brought together a range of new sculptures and paintings that continue her equally meticulous and playful interpretations of the art object, twisting vaguely familiar forms and figures into foreign landscapes and minimalistic constructions. Read More »

Installation view. All images via Galerie Neu.

Rose Painting, the second solo show of Norwegian-German artist Yngve Holen, was recently on view at Galerie Neu in Berlin through July 14. This exhibition presented a series of rims, ‘gutted’ from five different sports utility vehicles and then 3D-scanned, scaled to a diameter of two meters, and optimized to be milled in CLT (cross-laminated timber). The resulting objects are flower-like wooden constructions that feature symmetrical lines organized around a center point. Rose Painting addresses the formal design languages of a utility object, questioning the fetish object and psychosocial design that punctuate the objects that clutter wealth distribution.

The role of ornamentation in the above questions is central to this exhibition, which emphasized the process of creating the art object as much as the art object itself. The press release states, “Rims are typically made of aluminum, a material whose ambivalent value bears, on the one hand, the symbolic aura of modernity, while on the other, the ‘stain’ of a cheap substitute.” The artist’s choice to reproduce these rims in cross-laminated timber, this form is exaggerated in a form that is typically understood to be more valuable, traditional, and environmentally sustainable. In this way, these forms point to the symbolic and economic conditions of their proliferation, since the crisis of functionalism in the 1960s, and seek to “ride out the increasing aerodynamics of the contemporary chassis.”

The reimagined rims are products of technical woodcarving, a process that expose the milling traces, tears, and cracks of an industrially prefabricated resource sculpted by a machine. With their rescaled form, the rims present these blemishes as a ‘natural’ byproduct, pointing to the current schizophrenic relationship to automobiles that strives for optimized car use and reduced emissions, while continuing to fetishize and covet the SUV. In a sense, the SUV epitomizes the frenzied materialistic collecting of ornaments and materials behind car culture. The large-scale vehicles are extremely popular despite their high consumption of gas and the danger they pose to other drives and pedestrians, as well as their inutility in the suburban or residential contexts in which they are frequently found.

The design and possession of the SUV, like that of rims, illustrates the complex mechanisms of ornamentation, style, and economics motivating the circulation and production of automotive accessories. The title of this exhibition points to the function of the ornament to embellish an object, as well as invest it with value and suggestions of worth. The craftmanship implied in the title and objects of the exhibition stand in interesting and not entirely opposing relationship to the industrial processes of mechanical production implied by the rim.

-A. Corrigan

Related Links:

Exhibition Page [Galerie Neu]

Ozem Altin at Berlin Biennale, via Art Observed

With summer in full swing, the Berlin Biennale has opened in the German capital, bearing the title We Don’t Need Another Hero.  Referencing Tina Turner’s song from 1985, the show points to a moment before the major geopolitical shifts still rippling across the globe. Read More »

Installation view. All images via the Gagosian Gallery.

Prototypes of Imagination, an exhibition of new work by Katharina Grosse, is on view at the Gagosian Gallery through July 27, 2018. Grosse is well known for her in situ paintings that respond to the environment in which they are produced, typically with explosive color rendered directly onto architecture, interiors, and landscapes.  Employing bold colors and ambitious movement, her works test the limits of boundaries and redefine space. Her mold-breaking paintings and intricate constructions have challenged the contained space of the canvas and, in this exhibition, the boundaries between imagination and reality.

The artist’s use of an industrial spray gun has provoked comparisons of her work with street art or graffiti, as she coats the objects in her path, at times the walls and windows of the exhibition space, with bright color. These works can be seen as a meditation on the subjective and immersive experience of painting, as Grosse integrates events and experiences that emerge during the construction process into the artwork. In Prototypes of Imagination, Grosse seeks to “try out—and dramatically compress—the characteristics of reality” by building prototypes that can be reenacted and applied to other endeavors.

As in prior shows, a single gigantic painting on loose cloth is at the center of this exhibition. The huge expanses of loose cloth that Grosse works on in the studio allow the artist to respond to the specific architectural conditions in which the work will be housed. Grosse can paint beyond and in response to the frame of the gallery, from the location of her studio. In this particular example, the work hangs from the ceiling, resembling a hulking organic form, almost breathing with vibrant, pulsating color and the spectral silhouettes that interlock and fade into each other. The work reveals inverted chromatic zones produced by stencils of vaguely biomorphic form, as well as painterly gesture balanced with a dizzying array of overwhelmingly vibrant layers that suggest spatial and temporal transformation.

The other works in this exhibition, oriented around this centerpiece, are presented on stretched canvas and reveal a parallel effect of layered or scrambled form that tessellate and slide into each other. These pieces are punctuated by shifts in chromatic temperature, as well as forms created by stencils, folds, or other tools. These spaces of opacity or negative space are interrupted by solid geometries or ambiguous transparencies, creating a kaleidoscopic experience of color and movement that possesses a rhythm all its own. As the press release states, “each composition bears intimate traces of its creation,” thereby acting organically upon the limits of pictorial logic and showing the viewer the potentially hypnotic power of an encounter in the field of vision.

-A. Corrigan

Related Links

Exhibition Page [Gagosian Gallery]

Installation View. All images via Anna Corrigan for Art Observed.

Tatiana Trouvé’s One Day for Eternity is on view at the König Gallery in Berlin through July 8. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. In this piece, Trouvé continues her exploration of memory, material, and space. The work is the most recent installation in a series entitled Les Indéfinis, which addresses the myriad transformations that an artwork undergoes, morphing from an idea into material, from material into an object of circulation. Read More »

Installation View. All images via Blain Southern.

Now through July 14, Blain Southern London presents America My Hometown, an exhibition dedicated to the formative years of Edward Kienholz’s career in mid-century America. The works in the exhibition span the years of 1954-1967, at which point Kienholz was living and working in Los Angeles. This historical period was hugely significant for the position of the United States and the spread of capitalism globally, to which Kienholz responded directly in his work. The pieces produced by the artist during this time reflect a concern with the political turmoil and social anxiety that marked the political and social circumstances in which he lived.

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