Lara Favaretto

Lara Favaretto. Gummo. 2007. 

Carwash brushes, iron, electrical motor, electrical box, electrical wire. 200 x 369 x 120 cm. 

Installation view: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 2008. 

Courtesy the artist and Galleria Franco Noero, Turin. Photo: Paolo Pellion. © 2012 Lara Favaretto.

Lara Favaretto. Momentary Monument IV (Kassel), Documenta 2012.

I select objects that add parallel lives to my installations, objects that already have a history, especially those that have been submitted to various kinds of energy, power, and weather conditions—all agents that intervene on the materials that compose each artifact. Central to the exhibition is the overhead scaffolding, Grid After Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue, 1921: a site-specific installation arrayed in the ceiling space of each gallery. Taken together, the orthogonal geometries of the pipes, threaded through with wool yarn in shades of red, yellow, blue, black, and white, replicate a 1921 composition by Piet Mondrian. I did not select the pipes: They were just there in my studio, having been procured from local building companies. Because I work with secondhand and found materials, my choices are limited to whatever is currently available. I can never determine in advance the characteristics (shape, color, size, etc.) of the materials that I am looking for. Sometimes I get objects that I really don’t like, and I could perhaps cheat and choose something nicer, or buy something new and make it look worn—but of course I can’t, because that element of randomness is central to my practice.

When installing this show (Just Knocked Out at MoMA PS1), I never felt physically present when positioning the work, at that moment of selection. Like a dictator, the scaffolding’s grid decided the placement for me. Hence the title, “Just Knocked Out,” which can mean “only” or “merely” knocked out, or it can allude to that moment in boxing when one falls and completely loses consciousness, waking at a loss of where they are, what they were doing, and where they are from. This is precisely the feeling that overcomes me when I stand beneath the scaffolding.

A deep sense of frustration persists in my work. While at first glance it may appear carefree and lighthearted, these qualities subside as one moves into each piece. For example, Tutti gia per terra (We All Fall Down) is a sealed room filled with confetti and four stage fans. The confetti may initially amuse, but you soon sense something that you can’t reach. Cordoned in a sealed room, the confetti circulates without end, forming a system with its own internal logic that cannot be breached. The viewer has the option to experience the work on a superficial or critical level: It is pegged to the individual’s desire, the extent to which he or she wants to enter the work.

So often, art is made to be put in an institution and preserved in perpetuity under Plexiglas. Yet, to me, this model no longer makes sense. When the boat was shipping my work from Italy to New York, I was hoping that it would sink and that my work would be destroyed. At MoMA PS1, the exhibition is very strong, but it’s also safe: The chances of an unexpected occurrence or effect are minimal, and as a result, the show becomes a matter of placing one piece here, one piece there. But if the boat had sunk, the exhibition would have begun afresh, with a much stronger energy and power. It would be, precisely, the absence of objects. Which is a controversial idea, of course.

Lara Favaretto, Artforum, June 2012
Galleria Franco Noero | Lara Favaretto

Gabriel Dawe

The Density of Light, April 2012,  Lot 10 Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

Plexus no. 15, 2012

Site specific installation at LSU Museum of Art

gütermann thread, painted wood and hooks, 28' x 4' x 16'

Plexus no. 14, 2012

Site specific installation at Galerie Lot 10

gütermann thread, painted wood and hooks, 8' x 8' x 11'

Plexus no. 5, 2011

Site specific installation at pump projects 2011 Texas Bienial

gütermann thread, wood and nails, 12' x 12' x 12'

Plexus no.11, 2011

Site specific installation at East Wing X, 

gütermann thread, painted wood and hooks, dimensions variable

Gabriel Dawe's work is currently on view as part of the biennial exhibition at the Courtauld Institute examining ways in which materials have been used in contemporary art.

East Wing X, The Courtauld, Somerset House, London, 20 January - July 2013

Tara Donovan at Pace Editions 2009

Sol Le Witt at MOMA 12 Crayons

Jane & Louise Wilson at the BFI Gallery

Unfolding the Aryan Papers
A new commission by Animate Projects and the BFI, this work focuses on Kubrick's unfinished project Aryan Papers, a film about the Holocaust based on Wartime Lies, the 1991 book by Louis Begley. Prior to telling the story of a Polish Jewish woman and her nephew, who pretend to be Catholic in order to avoid persecution during the Nazi occupation of their country, Kubrick researched the project for many years and got as far as choosing the actors and the locations, but unfortunately the film was never made.
Researching the material available, Jane & Louise Wilson have focused on wardrobe research stills as well as period stills from the pre-production phase of Aryan Papers. The Gallery installation concentrates on newly-shot footage of Johanna ter Steege, the actress featured in the photographs originally taken by Stanley Kubrick and chosen by him as the female lead of the film. In a statement on this project, they commented on the 'enigmatic quality' of having only fragments of Aryan Papers available, something which they consider 'profoundly cinematic'. It is precisely the fragmentary nature of Aryan Papers which allowed the artists to work freely with the available material, without the constraints of competing with an already existing film. Despite not having been able to appear in the film, the female figure in the Wilsons' work is granted a visibility which was denied to her by the final course of events.
Jane & Louise Wilson are considered to be among the best artists of their generation in using the moving image. They have worked collaboratively for over 20 years on projects which are frequently research-based. Whether dealing with the Bosnian-Herzegovinian refugee community of Derby, decaying World War II bunkers or the dilapidated former Stasi headquarters in Berlin, the artists' sensibility for difficult subjects is expressed by carefully presenting their photographs and technically challenging moving image installations. The controlled nature of their works and the importance of meticulous research provide an interesting link between Kubrick and the Wilsons, which makes this project particularly fascinating. The exhibition also coincides with an extensive Stanley Kubrick season at BFI Southbank, providing an entrancing new context for the artists' work.
A commission by Animate Projects and the BFI with The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of films selected by Jane & Louise Wilson and the artists will be in conversation with Andrew Graham-Dixon on Wed 18 Feb.

Paul McCarthy at the Whitney

Paul McCarthy, Bang Bang Room, 1992. Wood, steel, electric motors, linoleum, wallpaper,dimensions variable. Collection Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Hauser & Wirth

Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement Three Installations, Two Films

This exhibition brings together a group of new and rarely seen works by Paul McCarthy (b. 1945), one of the most influential American artists of his generation. The show focuses on a core strand of McCarthy's work: the use of architecture to create perceptual disorientation in the viewer through spinning mirrors, rotating walls, projections, and altered space. In Bang Bang Room (1992), the space almost seems to come alive as the walls of a free-standing domestic room move slowly in and out, the doors in each wall wildly slamming open and shut. In Spinning Room (2008), first conceived in 1971, but being realized for the first time for this show, live images of viewers are rotated and projected onto double-sided screens that appear infinitely reflected on four surrounding mirrored walls, enclosing the viewer in a wildly disorienting space. In Mad House (2008), being created for this show, a room spins disconcertingly on its axis. Two recently rediscovered films by McCarthy, one made in 1966 and one in 1971, reveal the artist's interest in perceptual puzzlement from the very beginning of his career.

Also now on view, Paul McCarthy: Film List, a film program curated by McCarthy, which provides an intriguing insight into the impact of cinema on his thinking as an artist.