|
 E-Mail
This Article
El Museo’s Biennial
/ The S (Selected) Files
El Museo del Barrio
By Ariadna
Capasso and Diana Korchak
This fourth Edition of El Museo’s Biennial / The S
(Selected) Files, features works by forty mid-career and emerging
Latino / Latin American artists living in the New York metropolitan
area. Curated by Deborah Cullen (El Museo del Barrio), Miki
García (Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum) and
Marysol Nieves (Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico), the exhibition
presents a wide array of techniques and media, ranging from
the traditional to the experimental, in diverse subject matter.
Recurring themes here deal with gender, race, immigration,
and a revival of cultural heritage, such as in Cristina Hernández-Botero’s
light boxes with gold pigments from her native Colombia and
Carlos Aponte’s hieroglyphs. But most interesting of
all is the conceptual thread that becomes apparent under closer
scrutiny; the conscious appropriation of verbal and visual
codes found in the immediate environment of the artists.
There are departures from the figurative tradition in Patricia
Cazorla’s sensitive paintings of women, in which she
reclaims the female body, and David Antonio Cruz’s self-portraits
that debunk stereotypes surrounding the Latin male. Utilizing
a unique visual vocabulary, Nancy Friedemann subverts traditional
feminine tasks; creating large-scale ink drawings on mylar
that resemble lace.
Quintín Rivera-Toro covered the advertisement billboards
along highways in his home town with gigantic photographs
of the sky. Un espacio libre is a public art project aimed
at beautifying the city of Caguas, Puerto Rico, while critiquing
consumerism. Whereas the billboards that clog the visual horizon
of Caguas try to sell the highway drivers various consumer
goods, Rivera-Toro emphasizes that the most beautiful and
essential product of all is the one that is free: Nature.
Another innovative use of “the sign” is found
in Richard Garet’s The Liberation of Meaning. While
Rivera-Toro reclaims the visual space, Garet addresses our
auditory ambiance by extracting phrases from a recording of
Uruguay’s major poet, Mario Benedetti, and then reciting
his own poetry in hundreds of sound bites. The artist then
placed the de-contextualized phrases and words into two “I-Pods”
that played randomly. His apparent intention was to separate
the words of their meaning, thereby leaving only the quality
of the sound. But the words and the tone of voice carry a
weight that cannot be erased, and this transforms The Liberation
of Meaning into an infinite poem that is continuously being
created; one whose endless meanings are assigned by each individual
hears it in different context.
Carlos Motta’s work offers insight into why many Latin
American artists are concerned with reclaiming their cultural
freedom. SOA #3, a work from the series SOA: Black and White
Pain-tings is an audio book in which speeches given by graduates
of the school of the Americas — the infamous training
ground for military personnel intervening in Latin America
— are modified. Instead of dogmatic affirmations, the
speakers are made to question their own words.
These artists consciously alter their environment in order
to make it “theirs.” Inundated, both at home and
abroad, with the rules of the global market place, they choose
to take creative action, making art works that subvert these
new rules.
Through 1/26/06.
E-Mail
This Article
Paresh Hazra
Eighth Elephant Contemporary
By Joel Simpson
The egg tempera paintings of Paresh Hazra (b. 1952) are a
revelation. Drawing his brilliant colors and iconography from
a native West Bengal and Indian tradition, his treatment overlays
stylistic references to Picasso, German expressionists, notably
Max Beckmann, and especially the whimsical, gravity defying
Marc Chagall, to arrive at gentle send-ups of Hindu and only
slightly more distantly, Christian iconography. His lush mermaids
swim languidly among the lotuses, their scales and tails in
ochres and gold, their skin in pink and blue, reflecting the
water around them. They fill the eye with color, texture,
form and muted eroticism, while their shadowy eyes seem to
remain entirely indifferent to the viewer — not a hint
of seduction.
Hazra depicts the blue-skinned Krishna both in a love context
with one of his gopis (hand maidens), along with his iconic
flute, and as a naked baby on his mother’s lap. These
are the most mischievous of all, since he is immodestly exposed
for a deity (but not for a baby), and his genitals are as
blue as the rest of him. This is a baby, unlike the Christ
child, who pees, defecates — and hugs his mommy. But
more than this, Krishna, whether he is with his mother or
his lover(s) emits a subtle joy, in contrast to the more somber
mermaids.
Hazra has other series, including two based on masks that
incorporate fiber textures into the surface of the canvas.
His eco-masques are mostly in shades of blue and depict a
stylized head in a picture frame enveloped by plant tendrils.
His [non-eco] masques are in yellow and brown and are portioned
into sections by what appears to be pieces of jute. The images
are even more simplified — Picasso-like versions of
faces, horses, dogs and other creatures. This show presents
an artist firmly rooted in Eastern as well as Western traditions,
one who draws freely from both with masterful technique, humor
and imagination.
12/1 through 12/30.
E-Mail
This Article
Arturo Cuenca
Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art
By Mary Hrbacek
Cuenca articulates a unique, sensory vision
through imaginative amalgams of the portrait and landscape
genres. In several hybrid photo-montages and acrylic paintings,
he reinvents the sky as an iconic portrait head that fills
the upper format. Images of the literary giants, Oscar Wilde
and Marcel Proust, add emotional and intellectual weight to
the softly defined portraits that preside over the landscape
situated in the format beneath them. The authors, visualized
as presiding deities, evoke a spiritual feeling of the eternal.
Conceptually, these images hint that the all-male orientation
is a natural and harmonious part of nature's diverse manifestations.
In some works, the sexual content is conveyed metaphorically
by the stigma of an Anthurium flower. While the phallic symbol
is at times placed front and center, this adds to the fun
inherent in the fresh, unusual work of this Cuban-born artist.
Cuenca creates the effect of a rare book through the use of
softly blurred edges, combined with pale gray and sepia tones.
Fading forms add a nostalgic note that elicits a feeling of
memory and passing time, while unpainted edges add a Mark
Rothko effect.
Both Aesthetic: Proust As Landscape (2005) and the diptych
Aesthetic: Wilde As landscape (1997) offer a poetic vision
that evokes the telepathy the Bronte sisters employ in their
novels, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. In the Cuban tradition
of inventing new words from everyday vocabulary, the playful
title for this series, "Aesthasy," suggests a correlation
between sexual ecstasy and the creative ecstasy that comes
through aesthetic fulfillment. Another linguistic invention
used here, the term "Photosophy," expresses the
linking of visual imagery with philosophy.
Cuenca juxtaposes unusual combinations of forms, employing
an indirect, watercolor-like technique that veils his strong
erotic content without diminishing it's power. His complex,
subtle images blend the barriers between representation and
abstraction, painting and photography, life and art.
11/1 through 11/26.
E-Mail
This Article
Gary Schneider
Aperture Foundation
By Chris Twomey
This sublime exhibition of full frontal nude photo portraits
is akin to attending a nude, candlelit cocktail party to which
you have invited a gathering your favorite friends. Formal,
titillating, as well as endearingly familiar, each photograph
speaks, revealing its own secrets.
Photographed between 2002 and 2004, the thirty larger-than-life
portraits, both male and female, fill the gallery space. Each
person is photographed lying prone against a black backdrop,
but the final images are pinned onto the wall in a scroll-like
fashion. This gives the figures the impression of standing
upright while they boldly gaze out, unfazed, in their nakedness.
The immediacy of the experience, standing among these figures,
is enhanced by the matte quality of the print; pigmented ink
on photographic canvas. There is no glossy sheen to remind
us that these are photographs, and not our imaginary party
guests.
The light flickers eerily over their bodies. Small blurs and
double exposures associated with long exposure times animate
the life which courses beneath each photograph. The lighting
effect creates a glowing aura around the bony landscape of
their bodies’ individual bumps and dips. Skin tones
vary and the delicate blemishes which uniquely distinguish
each person add to our understanding of their identity.
VINCENT looks as if he is covered in fur, but in fact he has
very dense body hair. WILAMINA looks as if she is made of
porcelain; her skin is so radiant that it opalesces. ELLEN
has a distended belly that appears to move; she is heavy with
child. Most of these individuals look serious, and a few of
the portraits seem to suggest a determined endurance.
Using a hand held flashlight, Schneider illuminates a small
portion of the body as he or she lay beneath his 8 x 10 studio
camera. While he counts the time needed to create a photographic
exposure, he methodically circles the flashlight over their
bodies, from head to toe. Bathing them in tiny pools of light,
he carves out an eye, a cheek, and then a neck, in a process
which may take over an hour.
Building up the image in this way creates a time-based performance
where the boundaries between viewer and subject become blurred.
Schneider, with his light, becomes an active participant and
performer in the photograph. His subject is both the viewer
and stage for the performance; the camera captures it all.
Schneider brakes through the photographer’s dilemma
that places him in the position of the voyeur or documentary
auteur in the photographic process. Instead, what we have
here is a collaborative performance.
The resultant effect is that we see these subjects as people,
lying prone but not merely objects in front of a lens. Although
nude, they appear humble in their nakedness, truly nude of
pretense and fantasy.
Yes, some are exquisite specimens of aesthetic and erotic
beauty. Nevertheless, Schneider manages to create a new paradigm
for the nude in photography — and this is no small feat
in a genre that has been so thoroughly explored as this.
11/11 through 1/7/06.
Ed Note: Aperture Foundation is located at 547 West 27th Street,
4th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Tel 212.505.5555 www.aperture.org
E-Mail
This Article
Sakico Kawashima
The Artist Network >>
By E.K. Clark
In her first solo exhibition, presented in conjunction with
the Nagoya University of Fine Arts, Kawashima, a recent graduate,
exudes a youthful exuberance and sensuality. Although the
artist refers to these works as paintings, they vary in approach
from oil on canvas to highly crafted quilted objects using
different materials such as satin, lace, black fishnet, pearls
and fun fur.
The work encompasses adolescent girl fantasies of sugar and
spice and everything risque. Although sweet pinks and pastels
abound, there are myriad allusions to vulvae, sperm and phalluses,
at times depicted in fluorescent hues. Some of the snake-like
phallic forms flourish tassels of fur, others are tied with
playful bows, even as they poke under a lace skirt, or embed
themselves in a kitten’s head. Sewn clouds, rainbows,
orgasmic fountain-like bursts, satin pillows, puffy silk blankets
and ovum shapes vie for our attention. Some pieces resemble
bouquets, some altars, some feminine bedrooms or mirrored
vanities. Imagine the play-room of a teenage girl audaciously
transformed into an alluring brothel.
Kawashima’s art celebrates a burgeoning sexuality and
young womanhood. Set against the backdrop of her native Japan’s
strict social mores, she seems to be declaring her independence
and subversiveness with this exhibition. The work is well
crafted, and it is clear that she is developing her own voice;
it’s a good beginning. Following in the footsteps of
feminist artists of the last several decades, she celebrates
formerly debased craft-oriented art forms which have emerged
over time from the domestic sphere.
through 12/3.
E-Mail
This Article
Will Barnet and his Contemporaries
Babcock Galleries
By
Linda Stein
Never one to care about whether he fit in with the art trends
of the day, Will Barnet has always done his own thing; and
this makes him hard to classify — even at the tender
age of 94. That is why seeing his work interspersed in this
exhibition, with that of his teachers, students, friends and
colleagues, brings home the point that his figurative work
belongs to no particular school.
Featuring works from each period of Barnet’s long career,
the show is all-encompassing. His teachers are represented
by Phillip Leslie Hale and Stuart Davis; his students are
represented by Tom Wesselman, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgoise,
Cy Twombly, Donald Judd, James Rosenquist and Henry Pearson;
his friends and colleagues include Edwin Dickinson, Marsden
Hartley, Marisol, Yvonne Thomas, Steve Wheeler, Barbara Adrian,
Paul Resika, May Stevens, Thomas Hart Benton, Nancy Grossman,
Richard Anuskiewicz, Barnett Newman, Abe Ajay, Milton Avery,
Isabel Bishop, Robert Blackburn, Gerson Leiber, Reginald Marsh,
Louise Nevelson, Dennis Cossu and David Smith. Seeing the
strong, angular shapes in a print by Gerson Lieber, and powerfully
collaged elements in a drawing by Nancy Grossman, as representatives
of today’s art world, underscores the historical dimension
in this show.
Barnet develops a subtle and graceful transition from human
form to geometric pattern, with sweeping curves of arms and
torsos mirrored in furniture, architecture and landscape.
The figurative shapes are linked to their setting with firm
anchoring to the picture plan. As figures blend with background,
the two become inseparable, so that an L-shaped bent arm echoes
an L-shaped chair. Throughout his work over the years, Barnet
often creates a shallow and "all-positive" space
that squeezes out illusionism, flattening the three-dimensional
form into a pattern reminiscent of 18th and early 19th century
Japanese prints. This influence is particularly evident in
the 1980 serigraph Madame Butterfly and in the 1982 lithograph
Reclining Woman, in which simplified pattern and flattened
color highlight kimono, fan and trees. In his oil painting
Woman in White, depicting wife and preferred model, Elena,
Barnet’s compression of space creates a pictorial tension
and spatial ambiguity, teasing the eye into following the
perimeters of flattened shapes to see how background and foreground
coexist tangentially. In his 1970 serigraph Woman Reading,
he gives equal attention to positive and negative space with
solid areas of bold color.
Many of Barnet’s figures become architectural silhouettes
in domestic and mundane settings, emphasizing his fascination
with family, pets, and the sea, predominantly with poses and
simplified vestments of no specific time or place. The stillness
and Seurat-like monumentality, particularly in the dramatic
portraits of his sisters, provide a psychological ambiance,
making these paintings some of Barnet’s most thought-provoking
works.
Through 12/21.
E-Mail
This Article
Marina Abramovic
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
By Chris Twomey
Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconic, Valie Export, Gina Pane, and
Joseph Beuys’ seminal performance work from the 1960s
and 1970s are some of the featured artists in this series
of seven consecutive performances by Marina Abramovic at the
Guggenheim Museum. Organized as part of Performa 05, a new
city-wide “biennial” festival of performance art,
this series imbues the festival with a grounded, art historical
relevance.
Performance art evolved from 1960’s "happenings,"
whereby the breaking down of institutional barriers between
the art object, the art gallery space, and the picture plane
resulted in an art form that used time and the ephemeral nature
of performance for its expression.
This interest in "being here now" subverted attempts
to commercialize these artists and their defiant, performative
gestures; even if commercialization woud come later.
At the Guggenheim, Abramovic re-performs, re-stages and re-films
the individualistic work of her peers, based on scripts, interviews
and artists statements. Not only does this bring lost work
back to life for the current generation, but it also packages
these performances as repeatable events. The original artists’
individualistic touch has been replayed with a contemporary,
appropriation twist.
For seven nights and on stage for seven hours, Abramovic re-samples
the poetic gestures devised by these artists amid the requisite
props and devises. The last two nights, she performs an older
piece of her own, as well as premiering a new piece entitled
Entering the Other Side, which she refers to as a living installation.
In this piece she states, "The artist is present, here
and now."
For this, the Frank Lloyd Wright designed rotunda, a circular
stage used for all of the performances, is covered with a
30 foot funnel in the shape of a woman’s dress, with
the artist perched at the top. Clothed, as it were, in this
behemoth gown, Abramovic gives off an impression of both fragility
and monumentality. She is indeed present, here and now, as
she slowly moves her arms and twists her body in controlled,
choreographed poses, boldly staring out at the viewers.
Simultaneously, the Guggenheim discreetly displays the six
recordings of her prior night’s performances, re-played
for those who missed them. These wide angle views show the
sheer physical demands she places on herself during the course
of the performances; demands that include, burning, cutting
and exposing her body for hours at a time. With that knowledge,
viewing her final piece elicits empathy for her self-imposed
suffering, as well as an uneasy tension for her precarious
position.
The shift in focus from a commercial art object for sale,
to that of a personal experience, unique in each performance,
speaks to the rebellious spirit of performance art. Could
it be that the renewed interest in this art form indicates
a shift in attitudes, a longing for something unique in today’s
market place of mass-produced image handlers?
11/9 through 11/15.
E-Mail
This Article
Malachi Farrell
Thrust Projects
By E.K. Clark
Malachi Farrell’s Nothing Stops a New Yorker, an installation
comprised of crumpled brown paper bags and empty cardboard
boxes piled on the gallery floor, suggests a wacky confusion;
until you find the cardboard skyscrapers that rise majestically
above the detritus, animated by projecting arms which move
smartly to the instructions of a hilarious exercise tape.
The second part of the tape, taken from film director Michael
Moore’s docu-satire of the 9/11 disaster, takes on a
more somber note. What is happening to our liberty, our individuality,
as we are manipulated by the powers that be? — the artist
seems to be asking.
Farrell is known for his kinetic installations and robotic
figures; employing technology and familiar materials in his
performing sculptures, he probes social and political issues.
In this ironic tribute to New York City, he speaks to us on
a visceral level with wit and humor, while investigating the
underbelly of the beast.
10/27 through 12/20.
Ed Note: Thrust Projects is located at 114 Bowery #301, New
York NY 10013. Tel 212-431-4802
E-Mail
This Article
Photo New York
Metropolitan Pavilion
By Joel Simpson
October was a rich month for photography. It began with a
return to the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street of Photo
New York, Los Angeles gallery owner Stephen Cohen’s
latest effort to unseat the venerable AIPAD (Association of
International Art photography Dealers), Photography Show from
its perch as the gate-keeper of fine art photography. Without
taking anything away from AIPAD, Cohen’s Photo New York
offers some advantages in that its lack of historical precedent
opens the door to experimentation. This year’s fair
added 37 gallery booths, eight installations and three strolling
collecting seminars.
Photography famously documents the world’s real-life
triumphs and woes, but this year, a consequence of Hurricane
Katrina was playing itself out in real time. New Orleans gallery
owner Vicki Bassetti was running on fumes, having packed the
entire inventory from her French Quarter photography gallery
into a rented van to set up her booth here. Nevertheless,
she brought along two of the artists she represents, Sandra
Russell Clark and Joyce Linde, who showed their own work:
Clark’s languid sepias of Delta countryside and Linde’s
toned abstracts of car and window. Hurricane Katrina had taken
most of Clark’s prints, although she managed to keep
her negatives safe.
At the Watermark Gallery’s booth, Wyatt Gallery (his
real name) showed 16x20 prints from Banda Aceh, where the
tsunami had hit last December. He had taken his 4x5 camera,
mounted on a tripod and slung over his shoulder, and walked
through the miles of rubble, talking to people, setting up
wherever he saw a shot, and where frequently locals would
insert themselves once they saw he was taking a picture. The
results are stunning, offering a vivid impression of the desolation
facing already poor families whose possessions are all gone
and whose modest brick and cement houses were destroyed.
This year’s fair also reached out to some of New York’s
Williamsburg galleries, most of which are not specifically
identified as “photo galleries”. Among these were
Jack the Pelican, showing the work of Michelle Handelman,
and the gallery, Chi Contemporary Art, which recently expanded
into a groundfloor space on Williamsburg’s fledgling
“gallery row” — Grand Street.
An idealistic, though disembodied art group of shifting identity
included here was Lynn and Diego del Sol’s Creative
Thrift Shop. Though their name suggests low prices and second-hand
art works, they actually act as a clearinghouse for contacts,
non-exclusively representing up to sixty artists at large,
international art events, such as the Shanghai and Venice
Biennales and the Zürich Contemporary Art Fair. Their
“stable” extends from the unconventional to the
wickedly clever.
Charles Guice’s Berkeley gallery, specializing in African
American photography, also offered vintage works by masters
such as James Van der Zee and recent works by Hank Willis
Thomas, Deborah Willis, Joy Gregory, Shiela Pree Bright and
Carrie MaeWeems.
One of Thomas’s work stood out in particular, Priceless.
Here the photographer has gone beneath the surface in a photograph
of a grieving mother surrounded by mourners at her son’s
funeral; with a Mastercard® logo in the lower left corner,
he over-types the prices of the items connected with the event:
“gold chain, $400, suit $250, 9mm pistol $79, bullet
60¢, new socks $2.”
Carrie Mae Weems, who was born in Portland, Oregon, had six
pieces in the show from her Shadow Play series and her larger
work, The Louisiana Project. Weems, who is also a storyteller,
folklorist and videographer, creates images that have layers
of meaning. "Shadow" was once a pejorative term
for black people, and Weems uses the full semiological field
around the word to explore incongruous racial transgressions.
Some of the most striking images were those at the booth of
the Palo Alto, California based gallery Modernbook. The larger-than-life
frontal nude, a self-portrait holding a cable release by photographer
Sylvie Blum, suggests an intentional eroticism, as her breasts
ride up on her inflated lungs. The work of Mary Daniel Hobson,
also at Modernbook, has a mischievous originality. Her Bottle
Dreams series presents landscape segments in different size
jars filled with water. Each row of bottles reconstitutes
one black and white view — of Macchu Pichu, or of Point
Lobos, California. It’s a strange way of adding value
to a scene, but these images fascinate. Hobson has discovered
a bizarre combination of signifiers, frames, segmentation
effects and lens effects. Bottles, water, landscapes —
one thinks of the colorful crystals that grew into miniature
forests at the bottom of fish bowls that never cease to amaze
children.
In another series entitled Mapping the Body Hobson overlays
maps, needles and thread, butterfly wings, zippers, strips
of sheet music, hooks and match sticks on close-ups of body
parts, giving the impression of sutures and inner cutaneous
surfaces made from the most unlikely materials. They are piquant,
humorously discomforting and powerfully metaphorical.
10/6 through 10/9.
E-Mail
This Article
Liset Castillo, Jonas Pihl
Black and White Gallery
By Mary Hrbacek
In her new series of meticulously detailed color photographs,
Cuban-born artist Liset Castillo records the intricate systems
of tunnels, clover leafs, interconnecting lanes and elevated
ramps which she has constructed from sand. The formally imposing
structures are fated for a short-lived existence; as such,
an aura of mystery surrounds these models. The close-up shots
look large, but the scale is indeterminate; and the assumption
of permanence — because we assume highways are forever
— coupled with the ephemeral quality of sand, fuels
a mental conflict in the viewer.
The use of a seaside setting conjures images of incoming tides
dissolving the moats and turrets of children's sand castles,
while the artificial highways suggest the temporal nature
of the ice sculptures that Andy Goldsworthy creates and photographs.
Like castles in the sky, a visual metaphor for day-dreams
that never materialize in reality, these elegant photographs
hint obliquely at a future obsolescence of the car culture,
as we know it today.
In a similar vein, Danish artist Jonas Pihl's abstract works
extend everyday expectations of the painting genre by grafting
forms of installation and sculpture within the two dimensional
painting format. In his free-spirited approach to art-making,
process takes precedence; he splashes acrylic and enamel paint
onto the canvas, photographs the splash, and projects it back
onto the format. Then he carefully repaints the splash, forging
random shapes into recognizable objects. In doing so, Pihl
establishes a unity of duel creative intentions through a
dialectic that mediates freedom and control.
10/21 through 11/28.
E-Mail
This Article
Peggy Cyphers, Jason Hackenwerth
The Proposition Gallery
By Chris Twomey
Cyphers new work shows selective restraint in allowing the
glowing picture field open space for meditation. Shades of
light-filled ochre, pale earthy red, and muted gold provide
loosely painted backdrops for the calligraphic marks and spills
which enliven the picture plane.
This series of work is inspired by the city as open frontier;
Cyphers’ personal city where fields of light diffuse
through mildly discernable edifices, giving structure to a
variety of organic and inorganic painterly motifs.
For example, in Grammercy, strange cellular growths bloom
and grow, while the painting Field/City suggests quirky techno
patterns jabbering on the borders where Cyphers has playfully
exploited the tenuous edges of the picture frame. The blue
painting, Pond, is inhabited by milky, out of focus creatures
that slip and slide along the viscous surface. We have the
sense of looking at gardens, terrariums and even otherworldly
landscapes; Cyphers gives us enough “reality”
to feel as if we are looking at something familiar, yet at
the same time, this is nothing like anything we have seen
before.
Working wet onto wet, creating a dialogue between these techno-organic
marks, the influence of Chinese Landscape painting is evident,
especially where fluid brush strokes and lines build the forms.
The layers of paint are textured with light pools of sand
and free flowing line drips of gel, as Cyphers intuitively
harnesses chance in the service of her composition.
The world she presents us is one in which nature and humans
live in animated co-existence, where brushstroke and form,
color and surface, carry on a convivial conversation free
of strife.
The gallery’s project room offers further meditation
on the relationship of humankind and nature with Jason Hackenwerths
Belly of the Beast, a sculptural installation that consists
of thousands of neon balloons installed in a small closet-like
space.
Peeking into the curtained doorway of this space, we are drawn
in by the neon magenta and acid green balloon colors which
are noxiously articulated by multiple black lights. Stepping
further in, it feels like going into an underwater environment,
where half inflated balloons absurdly protrude from the walls,
their limp, deflated ends trailing like sea anemones. In the
center, a wildly overgrown, tree-like balloon structure seems
ready to grab you and eat you alive, for your movement has
caused a kinetic reaction among the balloons.
Indeed, we find ourselves in a lush garden which has gone
amuck. This is an underworld, an anti-world; a latex colony
of toxic hues that compels with its own frightening beauty.
Both of these artists share with us a glimpse of an alternate
reality, positing their distinct observations, while continue
their journey to new worlds within.
11/5 through 12/3.
E-Mail
This Article
Edward Burtynsky
Brooklyn Museum
By Sarah Jorgensen
The Morris and Meyer Schapiro wing of the Brooklyn Museum
is paneled with Edward Burtynsky’s photographs, forming
a kind of landscape unto itself. At first glance, his large
scale photographs appear to be mélanges of pattern,
composition, shading, color, and texture akin to artists working
in painting and sculpture. Look closer and you see that his
subject matter includes scarred granite of quarries, uranium
tailings, oil fields, refineries, and factories. Although
his work covers the scope of human industry, his powerful
investigation of form remains decidedly in the realm of fine
art.
For example, Rock of Ages No. 26, a striking composition of
pattern and shadow, depicts a negative tectonic formation
caused by rock removal in a Vermont quarry. The work makes
remarkable use of the patterns created by new and older methods
of rock removal; the squares of bolted rocks left by current
techniques of cutting contrast with the patterns of lines
left by the older process of channeling. These photographs
evoke narratives that shape our perception of the landscape;
the stories about the techniques used to remove rock, the
geologist’s story of the landscape, as well as the art
historical timeline of painting, color, light, texture and
line.
Dramatic compositions in grey, sepia, and rose, reflecting
either fire or sunlight, such as Ship Breaking No. 11, depict
towering oil tankers (the largest man-made vessels in history)
that dwarf the men who have the unenviable task of breaking
them apart. When we learn that these workers are paid menial
wages for their treacherous work, the piece takes on different
level of sobriety.
Burtynsky’s later work suggests a critique of the global
marketplace. For example, phones from the urban mines are
put on container ships (both subjects for Burtynsky) and then
sent off to China, where workers in cottage industries break
them down into component parts. Having the effect of a linked
story, the subject matter in his China photographs call attention
to the ambiguous dynamic of an area that is becoming the largest
manufacturing center in the world. His factory pictures document
the urbanization of China. In Mao’s China some 90% of
the population lived from the land. Today, 40% live in cities.
Shanghai alone has absorbed 4 million people in the last five
years.
In one narrative, Burtynsky's camera traces the looming shapes
of China's iron and coffee-maker factories, conveying a sense
of the tremendous size of these industries. His Three Gorges
Dam series captures various stages in the construction of
the controversial dam that put countless towns and villages
under water to service industry. We see the destruction, displacement
and monumental building involved in changing the face of the
earth on such an unprecedented scale.
Although he appears to be completely absorbed in the subject
of how globalization impacts the natural landscape, Burtynsky
maintains that he is always trying to transcend the commercial
— to document its capabilities as art. He started out
as an artist working with Canadian government grants until
his work began to attract the interest of private collectors
and public institutions. Working with a traditional film camera
to capture his images, he makes high resolution digital scans
of his negatives and prints them back onto photographic paper
— a practice that is becoming increasingly common among
today’s digital savvy, yet traditional photographers.
In his research, Burtynsky seeks out large, human industry
— objects built on a scale that inspires a sense of
awe that such things can be “man made.” To be
sure, the U.S. is no longer a manufacturing center, yet these
striking images depicting the very means by which the buttons
on our lapels and the coffee-makers in our kitchens are created
give us pause.
Through 1/15/06.
|
