White Room Michele Abeles / Margaret Lee \ Darren Bader
Press Release:
White Columns is pleased to present a project organized by Margaret Lee.
These potatoes look real but they are not real. They have appeared twice before in two separate installations, though never as autonomous objects. They have been paired in the past with a cake sculpture and other cast vegetables. The potatoes, in this installation, exist with and within the works of Michele Abeles and Darren Bader.
Somewhere in between collaboration and curation, Margaret Lee uses her potatoes to intermediate between the works themselves and the other two participating artists. Neither artist was asked to follow any guidelines or rules in their approach to the project (except that they incorporate the potatoes into their own work) and all the resulting works have singular authorship. In working with Lee, Abeles uses a pile of potatoes as a prop in a new ongoing series of human-cum-still life photographs. In another image, she crudely uses the digital gesture of “cut and paste” by taking a photograph of the pile of potatoes and pasting it onto one of her pre-existing still life images (which is also present in the exhibition). Bader, inserts a glass onto a shelf lined with potatoes and also buries an iPod in a large pile of potatoes, which connects to two large speakers, nestled into an armchair, as Alicia Keys’ “No One” plays on random repeat, yes – “no one, no one, no one”.
Johannes Wald at Konrad Fischer, Berlin
démouler la grâce
Press Release:
Konrad Fischer Gallery Berlin is pleased to announce the opening of the 4th exhibition of the series Fischer oben (1st floor space) with the exhibition démouler la grâce by the artist Johannes Wald.
For several years Johannes Wald (born 1980) has been addressing essential questions through his work regarding sculpture. When can a work be considered as completed? Can the process of the making of the work, the realizing of its form, be preserved within the final work? Could a longing for grace and beauty, a desire to animate the material still be considered a credible motivation of an artist’s work today?
Placed on a rack with different levels we find several gypsum molds in an incoherent sequence. They are obviously negative forms, which are being used to cast the shapes of clay models, in order to allow the pouring of the form with bronze or another more noble material. Normally these molds are not seen as they have to be destroyed during the casting process. Several b/w-photographs clarify the nature of the molds showing a double exposure of the image of a classic clay head portrait overexposed by an image of the mold containing the head’s negative form. It becomes clear that the molds which themselves hold remarkable aesthetic qualities are only intermediate steps towards a goal which no longer seems interesting enough for the artist to pursue. Thus they indicate an unfinished process which demands a deeper level of reflection from the viewer than any, even perfect, imitation of classic beauty ever could.
In the vestibule adjoining the installation we find a small sheet of paper with a text describing a strangely dense, forged metal object – a perfect sculpture. At first sight it feels strange that the artist is only able to come close to such a work through the medium of language given the intense materiality of the installation he shows next door. But here as there perfection exists only within the head, as an idea – be it articulated through language or grasped through the forms in front of us.
Eternal Return
Group Show at NURTUREart
Press Release:
NURTUREart Non-Profit, Inc. is pleased to present Eternal Return, a group exhibition curated by Christine Spangler and Tyler Wriston in our gallery at 910 Grand Street in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The exhibition features Jonathan Brilliant, Cody Trepte, Thomas Lendvai, Reuben Lorch-Miller, Judith Braun, Joy Curtis and Tara Parsons.
Calling upon Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of ‘eternal return’ for inspiration, Eternal Return brings together seven artists who fashion repetitive, accumulative, or cyclical forms from simple materials, resulting in works that are quiet yet psychologically charged. This interdisciplinary exhibit will include three site-specific installations made just for NURTUREart.
via ArtCat
Nick Black, Pickle
Press Release:
Clutch Gallery is pleased to present Pickle by Nick Black. Nick Black is a maker, a tinkerer, a mad scientist whose materials are animatronic plastic novelties cobbled together to create a sublime clusterfu**K. Pickle is a work that on the surface has all the elements of a bawdy practical joke, but when activated the grinding rotation of miniature dill pickle and the raising up of a mechanized crocheted flower reveals a layer of self-effacing wit.
Nick Black was born in Chicago in 1958. He has attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, DePaul University, the University ofIllinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts College of Art. His recent exhibitions include Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City, Uncle Freddy’s Gallery in Highland, IN, Joymore Gallery in Chicago, theChicago Cultural Center and he recently created an installation for Pop-up Art in the Chicago Loop.
Clutch Gallery is a year long curatorial project located in my purse. I have had to pare down to carrying the basic necessities to eek out this 25 square inch white cube that is dedicating to exhibiting contemporary art of all media. Clutch opened in December of 2009 and will run until December of 2010.
Ettore Spalletti at Helga de Alvear, Madrid
Press Release:
Ettore Spalletti was born in Cappelle sul Tavo (Pescara) in 1940, and started exhibiting in the early 80’s. He has participated in the Venice Biennale on several occasions, and his work constitutes a landmark in the Italian art scene of the past decades.
Without a doubt, the chief characteristic of his work is its formal simplicity: these are monochromes, usually in a recurring series of colours (grey, light blue, pink and white) which, in turn, provide the title of the work. From this very moment – that of titling the piece – Spalletti makes clear the purpose of his work: what you see is what it is.
These are regular, and almost always pure shapes, in which, sometimes, there is a small transformation, a diagonal cut, which prompts the appearance of another plane: an apparently minimal nuance which, nevertheless, constitutes a fundamental change. His exempt works are “columns” or “glasses” which are still premised on geometric nature, while reclaiming their origin in the Classical world. For the artist, paintings and sculptures end up forming a unity with space.
Technically, painting is applied following the methodology which the artist calls “impasto”, and which relates these paintings to the tradition of the fresco, while at the same time making them gain materiality by emphasising tactile qualities, and sets them apart from easel painting in order to enter the realms of sculpture and the third dimension. He also uses pure materials: pigments and stones in their original colour, with no other manipulation but the cut and the point of view.
Spalletti aims to withdraw from Minimalism, and reclaims his roots in the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, his colours are those of Piero de la Francesca or Fra Angelico, and his use of gold leaf (which could be severely criticized by Alberti) sets him definitely aside from Arte Povera. These are works that aim at beauty as an unequivocal form, that aspire to the sublime in an unquestionable manner, and that avoid coolness with a decisive commitment to sensuality. Here, every reflection, every highlight, every tactile sensation, is vital. Spalletti understands the contemplation of the art work as a relationship in which time and space do matter.
Ettore Spalleti’s work has participated in the Documenta 7 and 9 in Kassel, in the Venice Biennale on three occasions, in the Münster Projects, and has been exhitited in Spain in the IVAM (Valencia) and La Caixa Foundation (Madrid and Barcelona).
