“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” - Thomas WolfeI am busy in New York this week going to several major galleries and seeing far too many Broadway shows. I will resume daily blogging on Monday, 4 April. P...
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Friday, 25 March 2011
Nude with Skeleton, 2002-5, colour video without sounds, 12.36 min loopedThe supine skeleton rises and falls, seemingly coming to life, as the body beneath it breathes in deeply and then exhales, repeatedly. Marina Abramović is nude beneath a skeleton created to her own dimensions. As she animates it, so it reflects her imminent death. She holds its hand in hers in an intimate coupling, the twelve-and-a-half minute video looped – condemning Abramović...
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Elvis, n.d, sumi ink and gold paint on Elvis poster, 97 x 67 cmA post of Elvis has been painted over in black, signifying death (Haring more often used white paint). There is no person here - only an image. Made meaningless and stripped of humanity by overexposure and reproduction. We see a created entity - man-cum-commodity. The immortal clichéd image that is Elvis Presley. A religious icon of the most iconic of celebrities,...
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Last Chance Lost, 2007, metal, neon, wood, and plastic, 122 x 8 x 61 cmJack Pierson creates word sculptures by combining found objects - old neon letters, harking back to old Las Vegas hotels and casinos. Each letter has its own story to tell and Pierson highlights this by bringing them together into words and phrases redolent in meaning and ambiguity. Letters slanted and mismatched appear as if coincidentally forming...
Monday, 21 March 2011
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Friday, 18 March 2011
Little Italy, San Diego, 2010, oil on canvasBased in San Diego, artist Grant Pecoff has a studio above a pizzeria in Little Italy. Focusing largely on his locality, his warped impressionist/realist style is consciously indebted to Van Gogh yet, equally, decidedly more positive in outlook, presenting the spaces of his city imbued with life, amplified colours and new perspectives.The large arching sign lit up with neon...
Thursday, 17 March 2011
White Painting #606, 1987, formica on birch plywood with 23 carat goldThrough Abstraction and the emergence of Conceptual Art, painting, in exploring the medium of painting itself, became reduced to its simplest form - the blank canvas. Here Christian Eckart takes this deconstruction a step further still, questioning the confines of the canvas and its frame, presenting a gold frame as the dominant subject - an art object in itself. The frame...
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Leopard Seal, Antarctica, 2006 (National Geographic)Photographing below the ice in sub-zero temperatures in Antarctica, nature and wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen was confronted by a large leopard seal. An animal with few natural predators and being potentially highly dangerous towards humans, Nicklen was fearful for his life when the creature approached him.What commenced however was a never-before-seen encounter with a little-known...
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Burn, Baby, Burn, 1965-66, oil on canvas, 298 x 981 cmA key work of peripatetic Chilean-born artist Roberto Matta, Burn, Baby, Burn was created following the violence of the Vietnam War and the 1965 Watts Race riots in Los Angeles. The title refers to the phrase coined by a radio DJ which was shouted by rioters in the streets of LA in anger over continued racial discrimination and police brutality.A monumental and visceral response...
Monday, 14 March 2011
Sequence, 2006, steelTwo colossal rusted metal 'S's stand within each other, filling the room.Moving between the tall metal sheets the body is enveloped, metal towering above and around. Your whole body is affected as you move through and around the work. It appears to change as you move, the tilt of the red metal bearing down on you. Walking into the work, getting lost within it, it becomes a room itself. You lose your sense of direction...
Monday, 7 March 2011
“What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” - Jack Kerouac I'm going on the road. I leave in 112 hours. Qantas to LA,...
Friday, 4 March 2011
Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966, artist's book (above: concertina, below: detail)"The images, taken during the day, capture only the facades of the buildings. Ignorance is given to cars or people, both of which are often cut in half between separate exposures. The imperfections of matching the facades are cracks along Ruscha’s drive. Through these cracks we find Ruscha, not such an anonymous author after all. Splitting cars in two, and mismatching...
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Louise Bourgeois, 2010, from the series Armed ForcesUtilising the talents of photographer Alex Van Gelder, Louise Bourgeois presents her hands - essential tools in the creation of her sculpture - as works of art in themselves. Sinewy and wrinkled, aged and used, yet also very much alive, these hands are fulled with personality and the evidence of a life fully lived. Photographed at the invitation of Bourgeois in her New York townhouse...
N. Clavipes Meets S. Erard, Movement 5, 2008, photographic print, 52 x 34 cmThe only strings on this silent harp are from a spider who, with the artists insistence, has made the instrument its home. With associations of the heavenly and the decaying combined, the 'harp' becomes a surrealist object dealing with temporality and contradiction. The series, in 6 'movements', acts as a kind of visual symphony, the arachnid creating its own seemingly...
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Monoblock, 2003, newsprint paper, 93 x 73 cmThe obituary pages of several newspapers are presented on the wall, layered one on the other. All text has been removed, rendering the pages into abstract grids with crosses and crucifixes above vacant spaces. Out of context these symbols stand obsolete, yet redolent in meaning and mystery. The gaps speak mutely of lives lived and lost, families grieving, funerals held. The focus here...
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