Andrew Lord

 Listening, 1996-1998

Ceramic, epoxy, gold leaf, Encre de Chine

I: 28 x 16 x 15 1/2"

II (with lid) 29 x 15 1/4 x 15 1/2

Biting, 1995-1998

Ceramic, epoxy, gold leaf, Encre de Chine

Vase 1: 30 x 21 x 21"

Vase 2: 29 x 16 x 14"

Swallowing, 1999-2007

Ceramic, epoxy, gold leaf, Encre de Chine

Jug: 24 x 12 x 16 1/5"

Vase: 27 3/4 x 13 x 12 1/2"

Three-Legged Plate: 21 x 20 x 20"

From his earliest exhibitions in the late seventies and early eighties, Lord has used clay as a medium of fine art to explore various subjects. While these subjects are as varied as silhouettes of artists and writers traced by the outer contours of a vase or pendent fragments modeled from his own body, Lord’s work grasps sensation as physical form. He translates the action of the senses—hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling—from their liminal states into objects, both tactile and visual.

In this new body of work, Andrew Lord approaches memory as a sense itself, creating sculpture in clay and plaster based on landmarks from Whitworth, England, where he grew up. Just as he used his own body as an implement to show the physicality of sensation, he treats the act of remembering as a capacity with corporeal potential. He said that “making this work has been a process of finding lost places”; and in reviving genius loci through his own hand, Lord has created a sculptural map of the town, navigating a personal history through the locatable and recognizable features of Whitworth’s geography. In addition to sculpture, this exhibition marks Lord’s first exploration of film, having created a video work based on a recent visit back to Whitworth. While the juxtaposition of the film may initially seem like a corrective to the more subjective sculptural survey, neither represents a standardized view; rather, both incorporate the aura of the artist’s own memory, discovery and desire.

Andrew Lord was born in 1950 in Whitworth, England, and lives and works in New York. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at international institutions including Art & Project, Amsterdam; The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA; Camden Arts Center, London; and Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede. He has also been included in group exhibitions including “Atelier 15,” Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; “Westkunst-Heute,” Museen dr Stadt, Köln; “Anderer Leute Kunst,” Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; 1995 Whitney Biennial; “Site and Insight” PS1, New York.

Robert Morris | Felt Pieces

Robert Morris, Untitled, 2010

Felt, 261.6 x 256.5 x 94 cm

Robert Morris, Untitled, 1996

Grey Felt, Steel Bar, 199 x 400 x 124 cm

Robert Morris, Untitled (Pink Felt), 1970

Felt pieces of various sizes, overall dimensions variable

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Panza Collection  91.3804

© 2009 Robert Morris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: David Heald © SRGF

In 1964, at New York’s Green Gallery, Robert Morris exhibited a suite of large-scale polyhedron forms constructed from 2 x 4s and gray-painted plywood. This kind of simple geometric sculpture came to be called Minimalist because it seemed to be stripped of extraneous distractions such as figural or metaphorical reference, detail or ornament, and even surface inflection. Sculptures like the Untitled (Corner Piece), one component of the 1964 suite, boldly delineate the space in which they are located, thus defining the physical and temporal relationship of the viewer to the sculptural object.

Morris’s sculptures often consist of industrial or building materials such as steel, fiberglass, and plywood, and were commercially fabricated according to the artist’s specifications. The value of the “artist’s hand”—the unique gesture that defines an individual’s skill and style—was inimical to Morris, and the work of art became, in theory, not an “original” object but a representation of the idea from which it was conceived. This notion allowed for the creation and destruction of a piece when necessary; Untitled (Corner Piece), for example, can be refabricated each time it is to be exhibited.

In 1968 Morris introduced an entirely different aesthetic approach, which he articulated in an essay entitled “Anti-Form.” In this and later writings he reassessed his assumptions underlying Minimalist art and concluded that, contrary to earlier assertions, the construction of such objects had relied on subjective decisions and therefore resulted in icons—making them essentially no different than traditional sculpture. The art that he, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, and others began to explore at the end of the 1960s stressed the unusual materials they employed—industrial components such as wire, rubber, and felt—and their response to simple actions such as cutting and dropping. Untitled (Pink Felt)(1970), for example, is composed of dozens of sliced pink industrial felt pieces that have been dropped unceremoniously on the floor. Morris’s scattered felt strips obliquely allude to the human body through their response to gravity and epidermal quality. The ragged irregular contours of the jumbled heap refuse to conform to the strict unitary profile that is characteristic of Minimalist sculpture. This, along with its growing referentiality, led Morris’s work of the late-1960s and early 1970s to be referred to by such terms as Anti-Form, Process art, or Post-Minimalism.

Jennifer Blessing

Tree of Life | Terrence Malick

For "The Tree of Life", the director Terrence Malick once again collaborated with the production designer Jack Fisk, with whom he has worked since his first film, "Badlands" (1973).  While "The Tree of Life" covers the origin of life and, to some degree, the history of the universe, a significant portion of its running time takes place in a small Texas town in the 1950s.  “We tried to make it as universal as possible and never do anything that would pull you out of the story, generally we wanted to create a place that many people could relate to."

Todd Eberle | Empire of Space

American Flag, Millerton, New York, August 2006

Grandparents and Dog, Houston, Texas, November 1995

Agnes Martin, Gallisteo, New Mexico, 1992

Todd Eberle: Empire of Space

Publisher:  Rizzoli

Foreword by Glenn O'Brien, Contribution by David Hickey, Photographed by Todd Eberle, Introduction by Graydon Carter

Contrasting ultramodernist photographs taken over a thirty-year period constitute the first book by one of the most celebrated photographers working today. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1963, and first coming into prominence in the early 1990s with his iconic photographs of Donald Judd’s works and architecture, Todd Eberle’s photographs document the disparate images that make up American architecture, landscapes, and society and are united by a minimalist aesthetic that runs through his work. Whether his approach to a particular subject is earnest (an unfurling flag) or kitsch (the Vegas strip), Eberle brings to his photographs a heightened sense of precision, symmetry, and proportion. The Empire of Space is a lavish look at Eberle’s career and features many rare and never-before-published portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and interiors. In the spirit of Walker Evans, Eberle creates an enduring and poetic portrait of America, the arts, and architecture through thoughtfully contrasting and analogous photographs. This exciting and definitive book on Eberle’s illustrious legacy is sure to rank among the most important publications to mix modernism, minimalism, and photography.

About the Author

Todd Eberle is a professional photographer and artist based in New York City. He is currently the photographer-at-large for Vanity Fair and regularly contributes to the New York Times Style Magazine, Interview, and the Wall Street Journal Magazine, among others.

Richard Learoyd | Presences at Fraenkel Gallery San Francisco

  
Richard Learoyd, Agnes to the Right, 2011

Unique Camera Obscura Ilfochrome Photograph, 58" x 48"
 

Richard Learoyd, Tatiana in Red with Green Chair, 2010

Unique Camera Obscura Ilfochrome Photograph, 58" x 48"

Richard Learoyd, Agnes with Eyes Closed, 2007

Unique Camera Obscura Ilfochrome Photograph, 76" x 64"

Text from the V&A

Richard Learoyd's photographs are unique images made with a specifically built camera. The camera is the size of a small room, in which the artists pins direct colour positive paper (known as dye destruction, Cibachrome or Ilfachrome) to the back wall and views the image, much as inside a camera obscura. An image cast by a lens fixed to the front wall is projected onto the paper and the resulting exposed sheet is fed directly into a print processing machine connected to the walk-in camera / dark room. The fact that this process is a direct positive on a large scale, with no print enlargement from a negative or transparency, results in an image of astounding clarity, detail and lack of film-grain. The effect is almost hyper real.
Unlike in most conventional photography, objects and people are brought to the immovable camera and placed and arranged in front. He also works outside the convention of a photographic sequence or series, but in a cohesive grouping of singular images. Learoyd's seemingly simple or restrained compositional arrangements belie complex conceptual and philosophical ideas, many of which question the nature of optics and the practice of photography itself. The chosen subject matter however does not overtly attempt to fulfil an externalised cultural or theoretical brief, but carries its message initially through sheer visual impact.

More Info  Richard Learoyd Aperture Article, Aperture 199 / Summer 2010

Paul Graham: Photographs 1981-2006 | Whitechapel Gallery

Paul Graham Interior, Rainton Services, North Yorkshire, November 1981

Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld, McLean, Virginia, December 1978 from American Prospects.

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011 | 5 April - 1 May 2011

 

 Roe Ethridge, Pumpkin, 2010.

 Jim Goldberg, Open See, 2009.

 Thomas Demand, Haltestelle, 2009.

 Elad Lassry, Skunk, 2009.

Wangechi Mutu

 Death by Mariposa, 2006

Ink, acrylic, collage and contact paper on Mylar; 17" x 25 1/4", 20 3/8" x 38" framed

 Cactus Green Nips, 2009

Mixed media on Mylar; 46" x 53", 52 1/2" x 58 1/2" framed

 

Before Punk Came Funk, 2010 

Mixed Media ink, paint, collage on Mylar; 54" x 51"

Spanning a wide range of media, Mutu employs interventionist methods of collage and assemblage to inventively critique the institutions of power and representation that regulate both the aesthetic and symbolic status of the gendered and racialized body. Mining such diverse sources as fashion magazines, pornography, and documentary photographs, Mutu's striking combination of the surreal, grotesque, and seductive reflects the underlying currents of violence and psycho-sexual tension embedded within the legacy of colonial discourse and the American subconscious at large.

Mutu's variegated surfaces move decisively between dense layers of spliced images, glitter, paint, and beads to the swirling calligraphic markings of snakes and hair that give voice to these dystopic scenes of desire, horror, and excess. Mutu’s formal methods of collage and montage allow for a mixing of photographic genres and styles culled from the mass media—a representational strategy that not only resists binary determinations but complicates and disrupts the very terms upon which we read images. Through the often jarring incongruities between her collaged elements, from the performative sexuality of pornographic poses to the ethno-centric bodies captured under the anthropological gaze of National Geographic, Mutu plays with the effects of displacement by constructing images that are always already dysfunctional, disordered and destabilizing. What Mutu brilliantly establishes in her charged environments and fantastical tableau is a framework that challenges the question of difference and its attending modes of address, suggesting that resolving these issues is, to borrow the words of the theorist Barbara Johnson, “always a function of a specific interlocutionary situation—and the answers, matters of strategy rather than truth."

Gladstone Gallery

Sidney Lumet | Dog Day Afternoon

Louise Glück

Gabriel Orozco | Sand on Table 1992-93

Sand on Table, 1992–93, Gabriel Orozco
Silver dye bleach print

12 1/2 x 18 3/4 in. (31.8 x 47.6 cm)

© Gabriel Orozco, Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Orozco works in sculpture and photography in a style that is elegant, minimal, and antimonumental. His sculptures are often ephemeral—in this case, a table on a beach topped with a pyramid of sand—and his photograph of it gives the constructed situation a longer life. This work encourages an awareness of the temporal fragility of our accomplishments as well as of the richness of the resources available if we would but use the ordinary in poetic ways.

Robert Smithson | Proposal for a Monument on the Red Sea 1966

PROPOSAL FOR A MONUMENT ON THE RED SEA
(formally known as Cube in Seascape), 1966

Paper on gelatin silver print

Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York

Tara Donovan at Pace Editions 2009

Tara Donovan

 Haze, 2003 

Stacked Clear Plastic Drinking Straws 

12' 7"(H) x 42' 2"(W) 7 3_4"(D) 

Ace Gallery New York

 Lure, 2004 

Fishing Line

2 1_2"(H) x 10'6"(W) x 26'(D) 

UCLA Hammer Museum

 Moire, 1999 

Adding Machine Paper 

2' 8"(H) x 29'(W) x 24' 6 1_2"(D) 

Ace Gallery Los Angeles, 2005

Bluffs, 2005 

Buttons, Glue 

3 1_2'(H) x 5'(W) x 12'(D)

Ace Gallery Los Angeles

Tara Donovan | The Pace Gallery, February 12th - March 19th 2011

 A detail of one of her works made entirely from dressmaker pins.

 The artist Tara Donovan, and family, with one of her new mylar works.

Donovan in front of a work from her latest series “Drawings (Pins),” currently up at Pace Gallery.

In the art world, Tara Donovan has become the belle of the banal. She employs everyday objects such as drinking straws, buttons or No. 2 pencils to create large-scale sculptures and prints that take on a life (and light) of their own. She allows the shape of the chosen material to determine the form of the piece until it becomes magically other (think vast moonscape in Styrofoam cups), managing to transcend both materiality and gimmickry in a culture that celebrates both.

 

In her latest series, ‘‘Drawings (Pins),’’ on view this month at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea, shimmering metallic ‘‘canvases’’ are composed of dressmaker pins — tens of thousands of them. The cumulative effect is almost painterly. While these works are two-dimensional, they deal with the same issues as her ‘‘site-responsive’’ sculptures, as she calls them: ‘‘It’s all about perceiving this material from a distance and close up and how the light interacts with it,’’ Donovan recently explained, citing how Scotch tape, stuck to itself in biomorphic swirls, takes on a ‘‘fugitive color’’ when hit by the sun. ‘‘I’m constantly looking for this kind of phenomenological experience.’’

Picasso: Guitars 1912 - 1914

Pablo Picasso. Still life with Guitar. 

Variant state. Paris, assembled before November 15, 1913. Subsequently preserved by the artist. 

Paperboard, paper, string, and painted wire installed with cut cardboard box

Overall: 30 x 20 1/2 x 7 3/4" (76.2 x 52.1 x 19.7cm). 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Gift of the artist

Sometime between October and December 1912, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) made a guitar. Cobbled together from cardboard, paper, string, and wire, materials that he cut, folded, threaded, and glued, Picasso’s silent instrument resembled no sculpture ever seen before. In 1914 the artist reiterated his fragile papery construction in a more fixed and durable sheet metal form. These two Guitars, both gifts from the artist to MoMA, bracket an incandescent period of material and structural experimentation in Picasso’s work. Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 explores this breakthrough moment in 20th-century art, and the Guitars’ place within it. Bringing together some 70 closely connected collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs assembled from over 30 public and private collections worldwide, this exhibition offers fresh insight into Picasso’s cross-disciplinary process in the years immediately preceding World War I.

Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914 is on view from February 13th to June 6 at the Museum of Modern Art;  moma.org.

When Picasso Changed his Tune New York Times Review