Contemporary Art Blogs

Michael DeLucia

mh — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:54:48 +0000

Michael DeLucia, ‘Corner’ (2008)

T Rooms

Magdalen Chua — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:00:13 +0000

Matthew Darbyshire, T Rooms, Photo: Keith Hunter, Image courtesy of Glasgow Life

T Rooms, an exhibition by Matthew Darbyshire is on show at Tramway, Glasgow and runs till 11 March 2012. In previous exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2008) and Herald St, London (2010), Darbyshire has created works critiquing homogenization and non-specificity in design and architecture, provoking questions on the strategies and value of urban regeneration.

Matthew Darbyshire, T Rooms, Photo: Keith Hunter, Image courtesy of Glasgow Life

These ideas are extended in the installation that Darbyshire has created in Tramway’s large gallery, emerging from a representation taken from forms of disused and neglected spaces that create resonances in the surrounding depressed economic climate. T Rooms presents an imagined future where the neighborhood around Tramway has been taken over by property developers, converting Tramway into a gated residential area under construction.The gallery is partitioned with walls, each wrapped with a banner designed as a façade of a building featuring an assortment of motifs and designs.

Matthew Darbyshire, T Rooms, Photo: Keith Hunter, Image courtesy of Glasgow Life

As one navigates around the partitions, the liberal application of features taken from the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the celebrated modernist architect from Glasgow, becomes visible. These features, from the rose motif, right-angled patterns and distinctive typeface, are widely available in souvenirs from tourist shops and signboards of general stores in Glasgow. The assemblage presents a neighborhood made sterile with the tokenistic use of historical or cultural emblems, and this sense grows as one advances towards each wall, where the reality of the flatness of illusionary textures from the 3D computer renderings becomes apparent.

Matthew Darbyshire (in collaboration with Jacob Farrell), Untitled Photograms No. 1 - No. 3 (left to right), Photographic paper, glass, steel and paint, 2012, Photo: Keith Hunter; Image courtesy of Glasgow Life

Within the installation of building wraps are interventions arising from Darbyshire’s collaborations with other artists and writers, drawing out formal, historical and social associations from the issues regarding design and regeneration of public spaces. Untitled Photograms No. 1 – No. 3 with Jacob Farrell is a series of photographs informed by the rise of virtual shops, where vacant and disused shops are covered with vinyl stickers to give the impression of thriving businesses in the neighborhood.

Matthew Darbyshire (in collaboration with Rupert Ackroyd), Smoking Shelter, Sandstone, steel, harling, oak, perspex and paint, 2012; Photo: Keith Hunter; Image courtesy of Glasgow Life

Smoking Shelter is a sculptural work that emerges in presence as one moves towards the end of T Rooms, at a dead-end formed by the neglected zone behind several houses. A collaboration with Rupert Ackroyd, Smoking Shelter is intended to be a gathering space for smokers, yet it seems to be a space where the shelter becomes one for the ornamental steel structure with the Mackintosh rose, surfacing questions about the design of social spaces that seeks to embrace a nostalgia for signs from the past at the expense of human concerns. The exhibition also presents works in collaboration with Owen Hatherley and Scott King.

VVORK 2012-02-23 00:33:25

mail — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:33:25 +0000

“Ceramic Modern Lamp”, 2009 by Francis Upritchard. Ceramic, brass, steel, lighting components.

VVORK 2012-02-22 19:22:05

mail — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:22:05 +0000

»Hand Job«, 2007 by Kevin Francis Gray.

VVORK 2012-02-22 19:18:55

mail — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:55 +0000

»CC container with Parlor Plants«, 2011 by Annika Rixen.

VVORK 2012-02-22 19:08:38

mail — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:08:38 +0000

»Public Work 1«, 2009 by Nicolas Deshayes.

piano piano

cura. magazine — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:24:22 +0000

La contaminazione è al centro della ricerca di Marc Breslin (1983), che individua nel superamento dei confini tradizionali tra i generi la chiave per favorire l’ampliamento e l’approfondimento di una riflessione sul processo creativo, capace di accogliere al proprio interno la variabile e il caso, al di là di ogni tentativo di programmazione. Il titolo della prima personale italiana che l’artista newyorkese presenta da Umberto Di Marino (Napoli), piano piano, è un riferimento al linguaggio musicale e un invito alla pausa, alla lentezza e all’ascolto, condizioni necessarie per favorire il processo di crescita e orchestrazione degli elementi in gioco durante la preparazione di una mostra.

Dal 23 febbraio al 4 maggio.

Spiros Hadjidjanos

wyatt — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:13:16 +0000

Spiros Hadjidjanos

Work from “Network Time”

“Network Time is an internet based unit system created by Spiros Hadjidjanos late 2011, it consists of several Wi-Fi routers arranged in the gallery space providing free Internet access to visitors. The LED that reflects the data-traffic of each router is extended along a fiber optic cable magnifying its flicker. Although the devices look only physically modified, the artist has altered the operating system of each router, to manipulate the fluctuation of the fiber optics.” -Kwadrat

via Triangulation Blog

Jeremy Deller: Joy in People | Hayward Gallery | Southbank Centre | London

Aesthetica — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Text by Travis Riley

You wouldn’t be to blame if you assumed the large blue banner above the Hayward entrance, proclaiming "art exhibition", were a David Shrigley piece. It has the immediacy and humour of Shrigley’s work, and none of the seriousness that has in recent years come to represent Jeremy Deller.

In fact, for those only familiar with Jeremy Deller’s most celebrated work, The Battle of Orgreave (2001), the exhibition title, Joy in People, might seem a bit quizzical. The full-scale re-enactment of a particularly dark corner of British history is not a common definition of the term "joy". However, already visible from the entrance to the show is Valerie’s Snack Bar (2009), a recreation of a Bury Market café. The structure, surrounded by colourful parade banners, would be out of place in any modern gallery space, and in the Hayward’s high-ceilinged, factory-like rooms, it is wonderfully ludicrous. With my cup of tea I sat, staring out at the exhibition surrounding the stall.

To the left is The History of the World (1998) Deller’s spider diagram connecting "Acid House" and "Brass Band" music. The playfulness exuded by this work is joyful. It feels humble, like an idea conceived of over a pint, but that would never usually be followed through in the light of day. The evident mismanagement of grand-title and niche content is a humorous draw, which turns out to elucidate a greater point. It is easily possible to sit, tracing the diagram’s tangential connections for hours; there is a sort of disbelief that these two genres should ever be connected, and yet as with all distinct historical points, they inevitably find themselves related. Later on in the show there is a video of contemporary acid house music being played by Williams Fairey Brass Band (Acid Brass, 2007). Much of Deller’s work exists primarily outside of the gallery; the Williams Fairey Brass Band have continued playing Acid Brass gigs as recently as 2011.

To deal with this genre of seemingly un-exhibitable work, Deller presents a slideshow (Beyond the White Walls, 2012) in which he described several previous projects. From Karl Marx at Christmas (2000), to his "I love joyriding" bumper stickers, to a middle-class hand sign system (signs including "cup of tea", "radio four", and "antiques roadshow"), the works are equal parts culturally insightful and hilarious. The strength of these pieces is a restriction of scale, an almost effervescent quality. Each is a self-contained gesture, which Deller’s narration carefully and characterfully elucidates.

To the right of my spot at the café, a white-walled structure, about half the room’s height, dominates the landscape of the gallery. Inside is a recreation of Jeremy Deller’s teenage bedroom. He hosted an exhibition here when his parents were away on holiday, and although it might not have seemed groundbreaking at the time, the calculated transportation of the teenage art and ephemera to the gallery-space allows a it to become a catalyst for the other works. All the hallmarks of Jeremy Deller’s art are displayed here. There is work based on musical influence, cultural interest, and appropriation (borrowed text from graffiti in the British Library toilets, displayed on the walls of his own bathroom). The formats of event poster, archival history, and consumerist material, are explored, as they continue to be throughout the wider exhibition.

Moving on to the next room of the exhibition the inquisitive ebullience of the earlier spaces is left behind, there is no escaping the social weight of The Battle of Orgreave. The installation consists of an on-wall, month by month socio-political account of the events leading up to the clashes between miners and police, presented alongside the hour-long documentary of Deller’s Battle of Orgreave re-enactment. Despite the performance’s central role in the film, the documentary’s character is defined more by conversations with the out-of-character re-enactors. For every militant declaration, laying bare old wounds, there are numerous admissions of mistakes, and a lack of restraint on both sides. The film is by no means a celebration of the battle, but in its reconsideration of a moment in history buried through shame, there is also no condemnation. The positivity of the gesture, towards a situation always recounted negatively, shows through.

The piece It Is What It Is (2009) seems an extension of this idea. This time Deller takes a burnt-out car, a casualty of a Baghdad bombing, on tour around America in order to start a conversation with the American public, informed by the presence of an exiled Iraqi citizen and an American soldier. If approached as an attempt to bridge cultural divisions, Deller’s somewhat bleak version of the American road trip seems doomed to fail from the outset, but perhaps this was the intention. Deller terms the car "the conversation piece from hell" and as with The Battle of Orgreave Deller’s intent is to inform and confront, not to present a viewpoint on the war or make a judgement on America. The car fills the gallery space with a visceral truth much greater than its rusted metal parts.

The term "joy" is best defined as "a source of happiness", and it is in this sense that Deller has presented the Joy In People. This exhibition, Deller’s first retrospective, is built directly from his interests. The pleasure he takes in music, culture, and indeed, people, informs the show and is communicated throughout. His drive to investigate more trying, and often overlooked issues does not become an exception in this case, but merely a continuation of the same central principle. His art is honest, but thankfully, not at all naïve. Deller’s joyful and celebratory approach, far from demeaning his subject matter, affords it a grounded insight that has allowed him to tackle subjects from war to tea rooms with equal sincerity.

Jeremy Deller: Joy in People, 22/02/2012 - 13/05/2012, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX. www.southbankcentre.co.uk/deller

Aesthetica in Print

If you only read Aesthetica online, you're missing out. The February/March issue of Aesthetica is out now and offers a diverse range of features from an examination of the diversity and complexity of art produced during the tumultuous decade of the 1980s in Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, opening 11 February at MCA Chiacgo, a photographic presentation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art's latest opening, Conversations: Photography from the Bank of America Collection. Plus, we recount the story of British design in relation to a comprehensive exhibition opening this spring at the V&A.

If you would like to buy this issue, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Better yet call +44 (0) 1904 629 137 or visit the website to subscribe to Aesthetica for a year and save 20% on the printed magazine.

Captions:
1. Jeremy Deller Snack Bar (2009)
2. Jeremy Deller Open Bedroom (1993)
3. Jeremy Deller It Is What It Is (2009)
Photography: Linda Nylind

Group Show at Patricia Low

Forrest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:15:47 +0000

Artists: Donald Baechler, Mike Bidlo, Jonathan Lasker, Peter Halley, Ross Bleckner, Philip Taaffe, Sue Williams, Christopher Wool

Venue: Patricia Low, Geneva

Exhibition Title: The Bewildered Image: American Painters from the 1980s

Date: November 3, 2011 – March 10, 2012

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Patricia Low, Geneva

Press Release:

Patricia Low Contemporary is pleased to present “The Bewildered Image: American Painters From The 1980s”, featuring Donald Baechler, Mike Bidlo, Ross Bleckner, Peter Halley, Jonathan Lasker, Philip Taaffe, Sue Williams, and Christopher Wool.

Titled after Achille Bonito-Olivia’s seminal 1980 essay “The Bewildered Image”, this exhibition reinvestigates works by leading figures of the International Transavantgarde as a means of indentifying models of practice that set precedent for addressing today’s shifting contextual framework. Though the making processes and aesthetics of these artists are individually unique, collectively their works are historically lionised for their reconciliation of traditional painterly values with the 1980s radical new ideas of popular culture and mass media. Three decades on, this era represents a paragon for the current cultural climate of post-internet and globalistic flux. Featuring new works alongside iconic paintings of the 80s, “The Bewildered Image” re-evaluates their approaches to the pictorial (including its most abstracted conceptions) as a locus of astute and proactive criticality.

One of the fundamental paradoxes of these American painters is that, in its strictest sense, their image is not ‘image’: it is a platform for artistic negotiation and exploration, a departure point from the familiar to visual, emotive, and intellectual extremity. Their very concept of image is a constantly elusive fascination. In Baechler’s works on paper – all from his most recent flowers series – this notion manifests through his intense process of pictorial aggregation and obliteration: his collaged surfaces – built up from found material, some original, some adulterated through rigorous drawing and re-drawing – form fragmented planes, pre-charged with overloaded information and meanings. These networks of interconnectedness (of everything and nothing) function akin to visual white noise, their constant background hum a stark reminder of the technological anxiety that belies the primal imperative of his mark making and central motifs; a duplicity made totemic through his accompanying sculptural silhouettes.

Halley’s high-impact canvases hyper-intellectualise pictorial grammar: their hard-edged compositions like flat-pack architectures, condensing systematic power. In “The Bewildered Image”, Halley’s practice is represented by canvases spanning 1991 to 2010, tracing the progression of his image-diagrams from the redressed concerns of modernism and early pomo (with their battleground ideologies) to more closed circuit configurations, aggressive with their totalitarian pop; their clinical geometry a perfect image of the contemporary ‘real’, articulated in interchangeable units. Hovering between pictorial cognition, instinctive response, and dislocated memory, the image for Bleckner is no less intangible. His canvases from 1992 and 2010, both floral arrangements, speak with rarefied poignancy of the human condition. Used as classical metaphors for temporality and the cyclical, Bleckner’s ephemeral motifs dissolve as phantasmal impressions, giving way to liquid-slippery veneers of paint, its raw malleability and allusive command, to truths too excessive for language.

For each of the artists in “The Bewildered Image” the pictorial might be considered the result more of cause than effect: image has become the standard of alter-modern communication, the currency by which all transactions are governed. Image extends far beyond representation, becoming the very superstructure for thought, the politicised site of progress and revolution. In the 80s these artists were the first to navigate this evolving terrain; today their influence is beyond measure, their works more future-thrust and relevant than ever.

Link: Group Show at Patricia Low