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Helen Miranda Wilson
DC Moore Gallery
By Mary
Hrbacek
In a bold departure from her landscape painting, Wilson has
produced a new series of lyrical, geometric abstract paintings
that transcend the genre in several crucial respects. Completely
bypassing conceptual abstraction, these new works present
compelling metaphors for time and for the cycle of the seasons.
Wilson employs a refined color sensibility to create pictorial
light that convincingly expresses specific seasons. With underpinnings
in twentieth century abstraction, these joyful, musically
inspired rhythms are akin to the movements and directions
in the works of artists Sonia Delaunay and Theo Van Doesburg.
The simplicity and purity of some of these works have a hand-made
quality that hints at Wilson's interest in quilt-making, but
the radiant color relationships and precise touch leave no
doubt of the artist's technical mastery of painting. The smooth
surfaces feel free, and there is a slight overlap of color
that subtly interpenetrates neighboring shapes.
Limited means often opens the door to creativity, and these
works are proof of this assertion. The shades of brown, mauve,
burgundy and yellow in the painting, Winter, effectively capture
the cool bright light and reserved sense of energy indicative
of a wintry ambience. The work, Two Years, presents a variety
of shapes done in smooth rich hues of turquoise, gold, pale
yellow and aquamarine. As a group, these playful works establish
a life of their own; utilizing pure sensate colors that delicately
"sing," without overwhelming the eye.
The painting, Year, features a range of vertical squares within
a horizontal topsy-turvy format, while the shapes employed
in the work titled Brooklyn are rotated in ingenious ways
and wedged together, suggesting inlaid mother-of-pearl wood
surfaces. There is a marked absence of any conceptual agenda
in these poetic, evocative paintings. Although at first they
appear to resemble game boards, the work effortlessly transcends
the two-dimensional surface.
It is unusual, and indeed a brave undertaking for an artist
to change direction; making the leap from landscape painting
to abstraction. But a change in the artist’s environment
can often spark such new discoveries. Now that Wilson lives
by the sea, close to nature, perhaps she no longer has the
inclination to paint nature in figurative terms. She seems
to have discovered a new language, as exemplified in these
transformative paintings.
10/11 through 11/5.
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UnderTONE
Mushroom Arts
By Lily Faust
This is unassuming group show of six artists proves a welcome
surprise for the artists’ inventiveness, wit and technical
skill. Curated by Yunsook Park, most of this work contemplates
the connection between material matter and meaning.
Here, Steven Fishman’s energetic mind creates three-dimensional
objects that re-evaluate appearance and expectation. For example,
there are “I-beams” created out of melted black
crayons; an easel is made from a pink eraser. As such, the
relationship of material and function takes on a new meaning
that mimics form, yet defies function.
Pushing sexual buttons, Timothy Blum’s three-dimensional
objects display a raunchy irreverence for human taboos. In
a work titled New and Improved, he brings together brand products
and human fluids, creating glass replicas of a bar of “Dove
soap,” a bottle of “Heinz ketchup” and “Joy
detergent,” and filling each with his semen, blood,
and urine respectively. Although the work recycles concepts
that have been plumbed numerous times in conceptualist works
almost everyday in today’s art world, its mischief in
this context has a personal, intimate feeling. In another
elaborately conceived work by Blum, a full-size male figure,
constructed from real bread, pours wine into a silver punch
bowl through its penis; which one can only presume is not
real. The sculpture is set adjacent to a life-size rabbit,
made out of butter, placed on a silver platter. On the show’s
opening night, visitors were invited to partake of the bread
and butter, and toast to it with wine that flowed through
the sculpture’s masculine spout.
Other notable work in the show includes semi-abstract paintings
by Chris Oh, whose wavering lines of runny paint and layers
of subdued color suggest the pulsating forms of nature, while
Haegeen Kim captures vivid detail in color pencil drawings
that are tinged with fanciful humor.
Jeongmee Yoon’s photographs from her Pink-Project series
depict individual girl toddlers surrounded by their possessions,
all of which are shown in varying shades of pink, and displayed
neatly across the floor of their rooms in an absurdly organized
manner. By recording the color’s abundance in girls’
rooms, in pink jackets, boots, muffs, umbrellas, pins and
ribbons, the artist touches upon issues of control and uniformity
in gender based color-coding.
The must-see centerpiece in the show is, however, Buhm Hong’s
intriguing installation in an enclosed project space, which
consists of floating structures created out of transparent
tape and limned in dots of chemically formulated luminescent
white paint. The room’s lighting system, set on automatic
timers, alternates between complete darkness and light, immersing
the paint-illumined structures in the inky black of the room,
then revealing them in their ordinary reality. The constellations
of forms and volumes, such as a boxy house, or an organic,
tentacle like configuration, represent symbolic extensions
of Hong’s homes from his childhood in South Korea. Straddling
the time jump of his childhood and adult life, his mobile-like
forms are beacons of memory that light up the whimsical bridge
between past and present.
Through 10/31.
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Sarejevo Self-Portrait
Peer Gallery>>
By Joel Simpson
This searing collection of images by eight Bosnian photographers
and one Croatian offers an equal number of different visual
sensibilities, presenting life in the besieged capitol city,
Sarejevo, during the “ethnic cleansing” war that
burned in the heart of Europe, from 1992 to 1995. The exhibition
was organized by a courageous New York photographer, Leslie
Fratkin, who went to Bosnia in the fall of 1995 — with
the war still raging — to attend an unlikely film festival
there. She made warm contact with the organizer, Miro Purivatra,
who invited her to return within a week; she returned, and
Purivatra showed her around. Fratkin was astonished by two
things: the pervasiveness of the devastation, fueled as it
was by ethnic tensions that were manipulated into full-blown
hatred by the powers that be, and finally bursting out in
both random and organized murder; and by the urbanity, sophistication
and humor of her festival hosts. She also realized that, though
moved by what she saw and experienced, as an outsider, she
could do little to change things. She had met Bosnian photographers
Dejan Vekic and Damir Sagolj, who had shown her images that
grabbed her more deeply than any she’d seen from the
international press corps. Vekic focuses on the destruction
of the things of ordinary life: ruined railroad cars, gutted
apartment houses, ruined cars, rubble; while Sagolj captures
the sufferings and adaptations of the inhabitants: a march
of mothers, wives and sisters demanding an accounting of their
7000 missing men, a boy gazes grimly over the missing roofs
of a building complex, the no-man’s land Arizona market,
outside the fighting and the law, where trade went on irrespective
of ethnicity, permitting some modicum of normality, a tunnel
serving as a makeshift morgue for the harvest of mass graves,
a sea of umbrellas within a roofless church during a service
in the rain. Fratkin resolved to mount a show of images by
indigenous photographers. It took her five years. The show
has been acclaimed in Denmark, Berlin, and San Diego after
debuting in Dayton, the site of the original peace accords.
Michael Mazzeo, owner of the newly opened Peer Gallery, located
in Chelsea, brought the show to New York.
The unusual variety of perspectives offered by nine photographers
is particularly effective. One gallery wall is covered by
defaced and shattered portraits of Marshal Tito, the benevolent
dictator who had held Yugoslavia together until his death
in 1980, and who predicted chaos after his departure. These
are by Milomir Kovacevic, who covers another entire wall with
images of children holding guns, some looking as young as
six years old and glaring menacingly back at the camera; one
child though, clutching a machine gun nearly as tall as himself,
waves and smiles under his loose-fitting obviously inherited
beret. Nihad Pusija documents the plight of refugees, particularly
gypsies, who made their way to Berlin; while Danilo Krstanovic
stares tragedy in the face, with a shattering image of a murdered
couple, and their bicycle, shot at random by a sniper; a bare-chested
corpse sinking into swirling water, with just the hands and
a belt buckle remaining above the surface; but he catches
ironies too: a NATO tank gunner passes by in front of a sexy
ad for suntan lotion which features four bikinied women thrusting
their blooming buttocks towards the viewer; a young couple,
just married, happily hold hands as they stroll down a street
protected by a sniper screen. Then there are the grim soldier
portraits, by Kemal Hadzic, of hard-bitten Bosnian fighters
in full gear, most dark-eyed, one bright-eyed, one showing
grit, while another wonders why and another asks (always with
the eyes) why he should give this a photographer his attention.
Hadzic also juxtaposes black and white scenes of bombed-out
bridges and their make-shift foot bridge replacements, along
with color postcards of the centuries-old bridges that had
been destroyed.
The entire show has been published in a book by Umbrage Editions,
which is available at the gallery. The book’s forward
was written by National Public Radio’s Tom Gjelten,
who covered the war himself. Ironically, the chaos of that
war permitted these photographers, acting on their own, to
collect the images that they did; unlike the made-for-TV wars
with “embedded” photo journalists and managed
information. Indeed, we may never get a document as penetrating
as the one that Leslie Fratkin has compiled on Sarajevo.
through 11/19.
Ed Note:
Tom Gjelten will be moderating a panel discussion on the Dayton
Peace accords, featuring Richard Holbrook, architect of the
accords, and writers David Rieff and Chuck Sudetic at the
New School Tishman Auditorium, Friday, 11 November at 6:30
pm.
Peer Gallery is located at 526 W. 26th St. #208, New York,
NY 10001 tel: 212.741.6599 www.peergallery.com
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Federica Marangoni
Remy Toledo Gallery
By Nicollette Ramirez
Italian conceptual artist Federica Marangoni has a long history
of incorporating performance art, film and glass elements
into her work. Through the decades, starting in the 1970s,
her work has been evolving. This show, Tolerance-In-Tolerance,
utilizes neon light, video, photography, sculpture and installation
art, to deliver a potent social message. The imagery throughout
the show draws heavily on contemporary media reports of conflicts
in Iraq, Somalia, the 9/11/01 attack in New York City and
the 3/11/04 subway attack in Madrid.
For example, People, is an installation of cast glass hands
mounted on pedestals with the palms open facing photographs
of a mass of people protesting. The photographs are mounted
on canvas. Two of the hands are painted red, as if blood stained
while the others are clear. The red hands of the glass sculpture
are reflected on the opposing photograph in a red hand print.
Ten Boxes of Life, incorporates photographs with the words
IN and TOLERANCE in red and blue neon, respectively. The contrast
of the aggressive red with the calming blue makes this work
resonate strongly with the viewer.
Neon is used with a DVD in a video installation entitled Dripping
Rainbow. Individual neon lights "melt" into the
screen and "drip" down the canvas of the screen.
The effect is one of contrasts again. The hard lines of the
rainbow colored neon, and the soft curves of the video, create
an appealing blend of color and composition.
Marangoni also uses this dripping effect in Frozen Electronic
Memory-Heart, and "Frozen Electronic Memory-Rainbow,
both made of Murano glass and sculpted into the screen of
a Sharp LCD.
One of the more captivating pieces in the exhibition is the
self titled Tolerance-In-Tolerance, a video projection and
installation of razor wire with red neon running through it
situated in front of a huge video screen that depicts men
in combat.
Given the emphasis on cute, fashionable art shows today, it
is somehow reassuring to see an artist offer up a thoughtful
study on serious contemporary issues, even if somewhat pedantic
in delivery.
through 11/12.
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Orlan
Stefan Stux Gallery
By Chris Twomey
French performance and body art artist, Orlan, best known
for her multiple “Nip and Tuck” facial surgeries
staged to challenge western concepts of feminine beauty, is
back. This time, the surgery is digital and in the form of
large scale photographs which combine her features with those
of Pre-Columbian and African icons.
The drama of transformation is still strong in these lush
and colorful self-portraits which fill the gallery’s
walls. Sometimes fierce, sometimes regal and even absurd,
Orlan has morphed herself into a carved stone deity, complete
with winged stone helmet and rocky countenance.
Clearly, the pre-Columbians had no inhibitions in depicting
powerful goddesses who demanded reverence, and they were were
beloved. This desire by Orlan to carve self-affirmation in
such a grandly staged manner is what gives this exhibition
its pathos and resonance.
Her seemingly outlandish attempts to mold her own features
into a visage that commands reverence and awe is, in fact,
not outlandish. This is the same desire that motivates women
to visit a plastic surgeon, in the hopes of being perceived
beautiful by her peers. This is a theme explored in Orlan’s
prior work, and these photographs expand on the concept, adding
a historical and sociological context.
Her eagerness to “bare all” in sharing this illusive
quest for female empowerment and affirmation is perfectly
in step with the prevalent confessional culture in the west.
In this, she lives out our worst nightmare; as we continue
to hobble our own feet with pointy stiletto heels, at times
in joyous complicity.
Attractive mutilations have historically signified social
class and beauty. The two life size resin sculptures depicting
Orlan as a carved African deity, display both beautiful and
bulbous scar patterns. Their faces are a finely chiseled Orlan/Barbie
construct, one with blond hair and the other with glasses.
The Baoule Statuette elaborates on a ubiquitous surgical procedure
common in the United States as it proudly displays two pneumatic
breasts sprouting from its head.
While Orlan’s social commentary is not subtle, the
effects of the social expectations which she so adroitly pinpoints,
are often understated. Without the sensationalism of “live”
surgery theatre, this tamer exhibition more clearly reveals
the intricate layers of her subject matter. Beauty, fashion,
cultural pressure, empowerment and perhaps even transcendence
come into focus. Call it divine madness, narcissistic self-aggrandizing,
or social criticism, Orlan’s visually intriguing excavations
dig deep and leave much to examine.
9/8 through 10/15.
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9th Istanbul Biennial
Report From Istanbul, Turkey
By
E.K. Clark
More so than other European capitols, Istanbul is a city
of contrasts. At night, the winding cobbled stone streets
in the older neighborhoods are filled with tables, people
talking, drinking, eating and playing table games till day-break;
time seems to stop. Does anyone here ever work? Then, in the
ultra-modern neighborhoods of Nisantasi and Tesvikiye where
upscale art galleries are located, such as Gallery Nev, you
could think that you’re in the upper East side of New
York or walking the fashionable streets of Milan or Paris.
Just within the past year the city’s culture industry
has given rise to the Istanbul Modern and the Pera Museum;
so new are these institutions that taxi drivers have to ask
directions and even the locals are mystified.
The 9th Istanbul Biennial proved a welcome opportunity to
showcase the city’s bustling art scene; but the most
interesting action seemed to be going on in a warehouse located
in the courtyard next to the Istanbul Modern. Here, there
is a concentration of the more edgy, progressive art work;
artists working with their own personal histories. For example,
a group of twenty-year-olds from Jakarta, RUANGRUPA, produced
red tee-shirts with printed slogans that referenced popular
culture, street art and Indonesian propaganda. A kiosk offered
art works and “underground” magazines. Much of
the work had political undertones, reminiscent of New York’s
East Village in the 1980’s, young, obstreperousness.
In this vast goulash of competing art, it was difficult to
focus on individual works. However there were standouts: A.
Majava, a Turkish artist, whose Earthly Revelations, consisted
of an old kilim raised off the floor so that it looked like
a “flying carpet”. This brilliant conceptual piece
poked fun at common, western perceptions of Turkish folklore.
The Istanbul Modern is housed in an elegant building, and
perhaps not surprisingly some artists here complain that its
collection is too conservative. Rosa Martinez, who serves
as the new international curator, seems poised to shake things
up however, especially if she turns her attention to the rich
local scene. But this is not yet the case; her show, Center
of Gravity, was not particularly well received as it featured
the usual suspects (you know their names already from shows
in New York and at the big art fairs). The “non-brand”
local talent was the real exception. The video, Birth of Art,
by Halyk Akakce, was witty, philosophical and visually engaging,
as was the sculpture by Kemal Onsoy made out of foam sheets
that seemed to spiral in the air. Outside, Rem Koolhouse’s
gigantic inflatable installation swayed, teasingly.
Some of the most edgy artwork could be found in could be
found in nearby galleries. For example, Apel Gallery featured
clever transformations by Sakir Gokcebag, and a conceptual
piece made from an array of shoes. The location on Buyukada
is called Modern-ist Museum. The site, an abandoned building
and surrounding “garden” provides a challenging
site for this “Museum with-out walls”.
The Pera Museum, which opened several months ago and which
was not included in the press kit for the Biennial, proved
to be a gem. Two floors have a history theme; one was dedicated
to Anatolian ceramics and the other examined the history of
weights and measures, while the remaining floors exhibited
new Turkish art.
A “Biennial”, whether here or in Venice or at
the Whitney, (not to mention countless other destinations)
is essentially a means for bringing people together to consider
and reconsider art. As such, this year’s Istanbul Biennial
certainly did this and more: opening the door just that much
further between yesterday’s Fortress Europe and a new
generation of creative talent that must be seen and heard.
Summer / 2005.
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Carolee Schneemann, Carrie
Mae Weems & Jenny Perlin
Jack Tilton Gallery
By Chris Twomey
This exhibition of works by three women artists, spanning
three generations, is surprisingly consistent in its overall
tone and material affect, despite the differing influences
that each artist brings from her particular modern and post
modern background. All of the works share a documentary sensibility
in the use of photography, video, and film, depicting the
artists’ efforts to engage and change the world around
them through art.
The gallery venue, an Upper East Side town house converted
into an exhibition space, serves as an intriguing backdrop
for the show. Upon entering the two-story space ,we see a
black and white film projected onto a bare wall. Rorshach
(2002) by Jenny Perlin, the youngest of the three artists,
was shot on grainy film stock, and flickers at times, giving
it the appearance of a film from the past.
Upstairs, Carol Schneemann, whose groundbreaking “happenings”
in the 1960‚s and 70’s demystified the female
nude and trail blazed the way for female performance artists
of today, is featured in several series of photographs and
a films from that period, as well as a new print, Interior
Scroll, which is a montage of photos from her 1975 signature
piece. Schneemann is a seminal figure in feminist politics
and modern performance art, and her work in this show helps
to give a point of reference to the other two artists.
In Ices Strip (1972), 20 photographs are arranged in a loose
narrative which depicts Schneemann undressing on a table in
what looks like a moving train. One set of men are shown taking
pictures of her stripping, while men sit at the table and
ignoring her. The so called “male gaze” is laid
bare as her body becomes both subject and an object.
As a challenge to the male dominated club of Abstract Expressionist
artists of that period, she uses her naked body as a canvas
in a photographic series called Eye Body: 36 Transformative
Actions, (1963). Also, in a DVD made from earlier work entitled
Body Collage, (1967), we witness her heady exuberance as she
casts off oppressive restraints and rolls herself naked into
the art materials. The jerky black and white image, probably
transferred from a hand cranked 16 mm Bolex film camera, adds
to the wackiness and fun. No longer is the body a passive
object; for covered with the materials of art making, it becomes
a joyous abstract gesture.
In an adjoining room, Carrie Mae Weems, born in the 1950’s,
also employs documentary methods and uses her body as both
witness and participant in the art making process. As a child
of the late 1960s, having absorbed what feminist triumphs
there were, Ms. Weems concentrates on issues of race, economics
and African American identity, all of which are addressed
in Sited for Record, a photographic and video installation
project commissioned by the Beacon Cultural Foundation. In
this project, she documents the changing landscape and shifting
racial demographics of Beacon, New York, through large scale
photographs. In the images, her lone standing figure, barefoot
and dressed in black, is frequently posed in the foreground,
giving a charged intensity to each geographic location. Her
back is to the viewer, creating a silent silhouette which
accompanies us as we view the image of an abandoned building,
or a still running waterfront view.
Much of what is read into the photographs is influenced by
the race rather than the gender of the artist, who is Africa
American, in the foreground. With her presence we wonder if
the tree lined railroad tracks were once the under ground
railroad, or if the bucolic river once carried slaves. Even
in the images where she is not present, we wonder who once
inhabited the abandoned prison yards and who is there today?
As history’s witness, Weems captures our attention and
allows the details of the present to keep alive the memory
of the past.
The same is true in an unrelated DVD entitled Before the Loss
of You. Images of two young black lovers are inter-cut with
dramatic documentary footage of race riots while a love poem,
written by the artist, speaks of “me and you against
the world.” Using the personal, Weems evokes the political.
The loss of the beloved becomes the loss of innocence in a
world in which hate overtakes love.
In the downstairs space, Jenny Perlin, born1970, is shows
her film, Rorshach (2002). The labor-intensive animation is
composed of hand-drawn copies of immigration questionnaires,
computerized receipts, “Rorschach tests”, self-help
advice, and fortune cookie predictions, complete with “happy
face.” Here, hope for a better tomorrow seems an absurdity.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks which laid bare the mortality
of civilization, this focused documentation of the day to
day exigencies of American life reads like a program how to
cope in a big and uncertain world.
Her obsessive focus also provides subtle insight into the
political and economic landscape of our contemporary consciousness;
many of the lists and forms she copies are tools used to determine
identity. The fragile nature of these tools to negotiate and
define our reality is enhanced by her use of 16mm stop motion
technique, which skitters and jumps the precise hand writing
with a beautifully neurotic instability.
Sight Reading, a three-channel video/sound installation, continues
this self-contained focus on details which reveals a larger
whole. In this work, three pianists perform and are projected
onto three different screens where they sight-read Schumann’s
piano concerto in A minor on their respective pianos. One
pianist makes a mistake and the screen goes blank for 5 seconds,
the other pianists continue playing. The first resumes, the
third makes a mistake and the screen goes blank. The music
gradually looses its structure as each mistake throws the
trio further out of sync. The result is a cascading waterfall
of piano notes, no longer aligned with Schumann’s original
melodic intentions; yet the mistakes create something entirely
new.
This is an unusual exhibition in many regards; the choice
of these three artists and the careful presentation of their
work successfully traces cultural hopes and disappointments,
victories and failures as seen across a span of some fifty
years. It certainly helps to know where you’ve been,
to better understand where you want to go as an artist.
Through 10/29.
Ed Note: Jack Tilton Gallery is located at 8 East 76 St.,
New York, NY 10021 tel: 212.737.2221
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Utopian Conquest - Ideal Domination
Rush Arts Gallery
By Chris Twomey
Idealistic Paradigms collide and mesh with harsher realities
in this group exhibition of work by four artists who work
in sculpture, photography, painting, and video. From nostalgic
attempts to live up to utopian ideals, to an acceptance of
disillusionment, these artists work on the cusp of that coming-of-age
moment where youthful idealism becomes tempered by a more
complex truth; where the rubber hits the road.
Amy Chan paints a elegant seven foot suburban landscape with
gouache on paper, the matte paint giving the olive green and
tawny brown tones a flatness enhanced by a spatial treatment
much like Japanese scroll paintings. Her suburbia has been
fragmented into isolated islands which float on the picture
plane, each island containing subdued and delicately rendered
landscape features.
Chan’s mountains, however, are marred by the appearance
of retail outlets such as Macdonald's, Dress Barns, and Payless
shoe stores, seemingly air-dropped onto the lush greenery
or rocky mountain peaks. There are no people; but goats, bison,
bears, hawks and deer roam the bucolic terrain, sharing their
territory with the desolate chain stores and reminding us
of the ideals that once fueled our march to this suburban
haven.
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow continues the theme of suburban ennui,
in a humorous and sexually tinged video, In the Backyard.
Here, a garden hose takes on a life of its own, and the sleepy
backyard is transformed into the Garden of Eden, in which
the artist as Eve challenges on the devil in a lewd dance.
The garden hose turns into an insidious serpent, while an
off-screen male voice intones the devil in orchestrating Eve’s
dance with the serpent. This version of “The Fall of
Man,” seemingly mimics hip hop videos where the pimp
directs his women; “keep movin, alrigh∑Go crazy
on it.” Social critique and feminist awareness provides
a dark immediacy that works well when juxtaposed with the
sunny, supposedly safe backyard where everything is actually
not alright.
Using photography, Deana Lawson explores the relationship
between private self and public space; where the external
and internal meld to reveal a composite truth. In two photographs
of black women in a domestic setting, their surroundings become
an unspoken Greek chorus, giving texture to the psychological
understanding among them. In one portrait, the woman poses
elegantly in a well appointed all white living room. A porcelain,
black ballerina is posed next to the Waterford crystal vase
on the coffee table in the foreground. In another, three young
black girls smile in what appears to be an old graduation
photograph set on top of a bureau, while the crystal clock
next to them marks the passing time.
The third photograph depicts a minuscule white house, decorated
in sumptuous Christmas light ornaments. Its two windows, door,
and the sparse bushes lining its façade richly glow
with color and possibility. The frugalness of reality is transcended
by the grandeur of vision.
Eddy Steinhauer works in kinetic assemblage and fabricated
recreations, mining the field of history and myth. The work
underscore’s the axiom that one person’s utopia
may be another person’s hell.
We see a complex, mechanical landscape standing on spindly
legs gyrates and belches with bursts of light. On closer inspection
we discern that the movement comes from an antique globe,
out of which springs the head of a black man which is attached
to a long wire. A bell rings, the globe spins and the light
flashes. Did our presence affect the motion? The viewer becomes
a participant in this alternate reality. A molten ape at the
base of this landscape contrasts with the molten rocket ship
attached above, and we sense that these elements tell of a
serious historical drama. Steinhauers alternative cosmology,
in fact, references Darwin’s theory of evolution and
the forgotten history of the 1791 Haitian revolution, an early
anti-colonialist slave uprising.
Colonialist and imperialist expansion is also critiqued in
a photo-collage of a burned out armored tank stuck, on a pristine
Caribbean beach. The words “I wasn’t invited,
so I came here to see why I wasn’t invited” speak
of displacement and an inability to reconcile. Ideals fuel
both sides of these wars, revolutions and dreams of a better
future, leaving us sadder but wiser, stranded somewhere between
Utopian Conquest and Ideal Domination.
Through 11/5.
Ed Note: Rush Arts Gallery is located at 526 West 26 St.,
Suite 311, NY, NY 10001 tel: 212 691 9552
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Susan Schwalb
Robert Steele Gallery
By Tova Beck-Friedman
This modest group of meditative works on paper showcases
Schwalb’s interest in silverpoint technique, which an
ancient technique of drawing with a piece of silver on a prepared
surface. As the silver passes across the paper it leaves a
thin deposit on the coated surface. In the early 1970’s
Schwalb was making very fine ink and watercolor drawings when
she stumbled upon silverpoint. Taken by the aesthetic qualities
of the technique and its possibilities, Schwalb not only mastered
the technique but farther expanded her vocabulary, adding
a wide variety of metals such as gold, brass, copper, platinum,
pewter, bronze, and aluminum. She also experimented with different
grounds and colors, erasing part of the surface with sandpaper
to expose the paint underneath.
Metal point drawing is restrictive and unforgiving, but at
same time the technique also demands risk taking; lines once
drawn cannot be erased and often there is no way to know exactly
what color the work will be until the metal tarnishes. Building
upon the intricacies of the interaction between different
grounds laid on the paper and the variety of metal points,
her experiments resulted in soft shifts in tone and color
that is reminiscent of the transparency of watercolor.
Conceptually, this work is rooted in minimalism; though Schwalb’s
imagery is inspired by landscapes. Like Agnes Martin’s
blending of pencil lines with translucent washes of color
to create lines that suggest an infinite space, Schwab etches
a field of horizontal lines into paper with variety of metals
to construct a Zen-like cerebral beauty.
Here, Schwalb creates a series of works around a single idea.
For example, Strata is comprised of a group of works depicting
parallel layers of ground and metal point line drawing. The
layered lines are curvilinear, at times almost parallel, facing
each other and touching lightly at various points along the
way.
Three small drawings, (measuring six by six inches) from the
Moment series -- an attempt to capture a moment in time and
space -- are compositions of balance and equilibrium of tightly
marked lines against open spaces. A band dividing a field
of parallel lines by a subtle change of hue characterizes
Moment # 344. Conversely, "Moment # 374 appears as an
open field divided by one band incised into it, with a consciously
marked border around the edge of the paper. Moment #380 brings
to mind a mowed field of horizontal line against a subtle
gray sky.
Though abstract, the drawings’ imagery conjures up their
source of inspiration -- a horizon line, an open field or
skies. Horizontal bands mark the paper, yet between the lines
there is always some breathing ground, and a quiet place to
reflect.
10/21 through 11/19.
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