NYLON WILD

1 March 2011

Haunch of Venison is currently showing ‘Translation’, a collection of work by Korean artist Meekyoung Shin. The show features several of Shin’s impressive installations examining the dynamics of subversion between material and cultural form, managing to avoid what can come across as witty attempts at cultural reference that are seen often in post-modern art and design. The first gallery houses her ‘Translation Vases’ (2009), where a collection of Chinese porcelain vases having seemingly been left in the moment of unpacking, some displayed on top of their wooden shipping crates, some still remain well out of sight inside the partially opened boxes. Shin uses this moment of transition to conceptually ground this work; Featuring the dislocation of a ‘cultural known’- in this case cultural object icons- and highlighting the moment of its transition into another world- England via China; Gallery via factory. In working with forms of Chinese porcelain vases, which have been highly collectible in the past centuries, she directs attention to how cultural obsessions have lead to reproduction and subsequently the dislocation of the ‘original’ with its cultural heritage; The British ceramics industry had especially committed itself to imitating such Chinese techniques. Contrary to what the eye can observe of these vases- which are apparently imitation porcelain sans floral arrangement, the nose might pick up on the fragrant quality to the air- and thus one beholds a room that is in fact full of imitations in soap. This added level of material awareness becomes an immediate point of obsession for the viewer- taking our initial reaction and voiding it completely; The same room is now a double vision of the philosophical and tangible, housing both cultural dislocation and enslaved material translation.

Entrance to 'Translation Series' (2009) in the West Galleries, Haunch of Venison, London

'Translation Series' 2009

Detail from 'Translation Series' (2009) Soap, Pigment, Varnish

Continuing through a few galleries is a second installation titled ‘Ghost Series’, featuring collections of translucent vases in soap. These forms appear to be very modern and industrially made, but still make reference to original Chinese shapes. In this case they are stripped of their decoration and materiality, allowing us to consider how they exist without such features that were meticulously imitated and treasured.

'Ghost Series' (2010) Blue, Jade, Yellow, Black, Pink, Purple, Clear

'Ghost Series' Clear, 2010

'Ghost Series' Jade, 2010

'Ghost Series' Black, 2010

The show flips forms through the galleries. Adjoining the rooms showing Chinese vase translations are rooms with smaller mythological and religious figurative works which add breadth to Shin’s success in material translation of highly treasured, coveted forms. The Kuros series speaks to the disintegration that ancient statues undergo overtime, themselves having been naturally weathered. ‘Crouching Aphrodite’ and ‘Venus’ are rendered in soap, the slight translucency and gallery lighting creating believable replicas of such classic sculpture.

Seeing Shin’s ‘Toilet Buddha Series’ and ‘Golden Buddha’ reminded me of another Buddha by Chinese artist Zhang Huan, created from the ash of joss sticks pressed into a large aluminium mold. The work used a material relative to the form but subverts the representation. Similarly Shin is using the soap to connect an idea of cleansing with religion, of daily washing as a ceremonial act- both still disintegrating the soap form. Similarly, with Huan’s Buddha in Haunch of Venison’s Berlin establishment, the community of viewers entering the gallery mimicked visitors in a temple, the Buddha crumbling from slight vibrations in the floor; The material in both cases becomes a tool for accessing the metaphysical.

Translation - Greek, 1998 140 x 44 x 30 cm

Detail of Translation- Greek, 1998

'Crouching Aphrodite', 2002 + Toilet Buddha Series (2010)

Detail of 'Crouching Aphrodite' 2002

Detail of 'Golden Buddha' 2010, Soap, gold leaf, varnish

'Venus' 1998, Soap, pigment, varnish 125 x 73 x 45 cm

Detail of 'Venus' 1998

Kuros Series no. 1, 2, 3 & 4 (2010) Soap, pigment, varnish

Detail of Kuros Series no. 2 (2010)

Hand Over the Machine

6 Hands @
The Aram Gallery

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Aram Gallery, Casting, craft, decorative art, design, Ella Robinson, Ellie Parke, furniture, India Carpenter, Installation, Matisse, Peter Marigold, textiles

14 February 2011

The Aram Gallery is currently showing ‘6 Hands’ an exhibition of hand-made work by three London-based designers, Peter Marigold, India Carpenter and Ella Robinson, all working in the fields of furniture and textiles. In the past the gallery has presented a series of exhibitions about prototypes which featured handmade tests of designers, pairing the methods of handmaking with the forms of pre-production prototypes. While that is a common encounter of the hand-making process in the field of design, we are refreshed here with collections of handmade work presented as finished objects. Curator Ellie Parke walked me through the exhibition to talk about the ideas and process behind these pieces, revealing the wonderfully subtle qualities of handmade accomplishments.
The most notable element of this exhibition is that these designers have chosen to work by hand, which doubles the feature of the show in a way that one can imagine the processes, then consider the results. The three proposals are incredibly different in what they choose to make by hand and how these processes fit into their more typical work routine. We can see that the prompt of hand making something yields conceptual test-work from one to final products of another.

6 Hands Exhibition

India Carpenter: Digital silk screen prints

India Carpenter: Hand-Woven upholstery

India Carpenter: Office chair hand-altered with pony hair back and woven seat design

India Carpenter: Screen in process

India Carpenter: Detail of hand screen printed geometries

India Carpenter: Detail of hand screen printed geometries ( specifically showing how the removal of the clips in the process of printing leaves the waver in the shape profile)

Peter Marigold takes a step away from his furniture for this exhibition, showing a series of objects that are the result of a wood-formed casting concept. In the back corner of the gallery displayed down the length of a narrow plinth and shelves, live three sets of what appear to be objects in stages of growth. Looking more closely one can see that they are made of press-molded clay and are the result of a reductive process. Each shows a step of the depleted interior of the wooden log molds. Initially Marigold cut the log into four quadrants, then began carving out the interior. Once a portion was carved away, he would press mold terracotta clay into each quadrant of the log, then tie it back together, casting the negative interior shape of the cavity. After pulling out the cast, he would carve away more, repeating this process until he had reached the limitations of the interior wall of the log.
This resulted in a fascinating set of progressive forms that exhibit both grain marks from the natural material and seam-line/casting marks from the process. These objects conclude as works that are neither functional or intentionally decorative, but use the idea of hand-making as an exploratory process, more relative to creating process-driven structures in design.

Adversely India Carpenter uses the handmade process in her final designs. This work was by far the most graphic and eye-catching with large, boldly colored, geometric block prints. A floating wall displayed four silk squares with geometric patterns which were digitally printed, one of her methods of working. These contrasted a larger double screen, and broken up installation of a screen construction in process. The set of unfinished hanging panels immediately reminded me of Matisse’s cut-out shapes from his later years; Their profiles were an extremely delicate contrast to the entirety of the geometric form. These wavers in the line-work which are shown in some of the detail photos, are a stunning result of her hand-printing. In pinning the silk for printing, the bands of the fabric are being stretched before they are printed on. When the clips are removed to release the print the line is distorted, no longer straight as it would have appeared to be when being printed. The attempt of precise geometries in combination with the hand-making process is what brings complexity and a slight animation to these pieces, which are made for larger architectural room divisions.

Ella Robinson’s work is a complete contrast, in a way the least subtle and the most decorative. Her work involves the process of hand-wrapping around pieces of driftwood from her native Brighton, resulting in multitudes of individual wrapped forms. These initially set a tribal tone, a series of small celebrations, drawing us very close to them. The simple use of material is made contemporary with colored fibers, rayon thread, stranded cotton and plastic tubing. Unlike the other work in the show these objects are conclusively decorative and are the least producible outside of the handmade realm.

India Carpenter: Double-printed standing panel. Hand-screen marks are left as evidence of the process

Peter Marigold: Dug and Stuff

Peter Marigold: Dug and Stuff, wooden log mold

Peter Marigold: Detail of terracotta cast surface

Ella Robinson: Experiments

Ella Robinson: Experiments detail

Ella Robinson: Simple shapes

Ella Robinson: Simple shapes detail

Ella Robinson: Experiments detail

6 Hands continues through 19th February 2011 at the Aram Gallery, 110 Drury Lane (near Aldwych) Covent Garden, London,WC2B 5SG.

Many thanks to Ellie Parke for the tour of the exhibition.

Toby Ziegler

The Alienation of Objects

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Artangel, ceramics, Elizabeth Neilson, Fischli & Weiss, Installation, Josh Tonsfeldt, Mathilde ter Heijne, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Oliver Michaels, Swiss, Toby Ziegler, Zabludowicz Collection

9 December 2010

The Zabludowicz Collection is currently showing a commissioned group of new sculptural works by British artist Toby Ziegler. The Alienation of Objects show Ziegler’s reactions to the transformation of historical artifacts through digitization. The main chapel space houses seven new faceted aluminium sculptures which are supplemented by video work that the artist curated out of the collection, further addressing his interest in the experience of communicated narrative and historical relevance in object and digital media.

In his statement Ziegler writes:
“In many of the works I have chosen there is allusion to the way information can be recieved as cultural flotsam and jetsam, and somehow they all examine the erosion and projection of narrative. Mathilde ter Heijne’s Woman to Go is a series of black and white postcards featuring found images of anonymous 19th century women. Printed on the back of each postcard is the mismatched biography of a different woman from that age. Oliver Michael’s films from the Musem Postcard series are derived from photos of historical sculpture. Using crude software they are animated and anthropomorphised to become mouthpieces for discordant monologues. A ponderous ceramic lion muses poetically, and a marble monk rants excerpts from the Unabomber manifesto. Josh Tonsfeldt’s and Michele Williams Gamaker’s human subjects are cropped, decapitated and objectified. In Tonsfeldt’s film a figure dressed in boots and jeans dances in an American barn. There is no music, only the ambient sound of his feet. His old-time hillbilly dance slowly reveals possible undertones, of M.J.? Britney Spears? Eventually he kicks up so much dried horseshit that he disappears in a cloud of dust.”

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010,Installation View

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Picasso's Iberian Stone Head

The show directs visitors through the lower level of the chapel past a few of the aluminium works and into the back galleries which are a maze of tiny rooms, the first room showing Oliver Michaels Lion and The Mourners. The projections effectively place one in-front of two giant, speaking, museum post cards, offering for assessment the relationship between artifacts and their take-away counterpart. Postcards are perhaps the cheapest, insta-experience of a museum, and pose insight into how museum-goers view artifacts- how there is a sense of possession or understanding of art or history in obtainment of this card. As a conveyor of information they possess more than a specimen photograph because they are inherently collectible objects. One can curate their own museum with them, without any historical lineage- simply because they are relatable with artifact iconography, memory, or personal narrative. The monks and the lion were reciting what is usually a silent conversation- a very abstract, and personal narrative between viewer and object. The lion was making statements about the atmosphere of the room, and then confirming or countering them…something to the effect of “It smells like leather, and metal.. yes, it does smell like leather and metal”. Because the animation is so raw there is an appealing surreality in watching the lion speak to you. The crudeness of animation reflects the crudeness of what the objects are saying, often-times speaking over one another so there is little to be understood, but whatever is being said is done profoundly with purpose, narrative, and a confirmation of existence. The projectors were placed visibly on plinths in the center of the room- appropriately a bare bones installation. There was no attempt at pulling wool over the viewers eyes as the importance was in the awareness of the translation of artifact to nonsensical animation, simultaneously, comically, isolating the dialogue of such an experience.
Ziegler also used a video of a cat lapping milk by Swiss duo Fischli and Weiss. Since he was able to consult with the artists about the installation of their pieces, they allowed him to project this film extremely over-sized in the screening room in the back of the chapel, miniaturizing the viewer and placing them on the same ground plane as the giant cat, forcing an alternative way of visual investigation of such an experience.

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Hellenic hermaphrodite pair

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Installation View

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Staffordshire Dogs

Staffordshire Dogs Detail

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Mezzanine View

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Installation View

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010, Hellenic hermaphrodite pair

The Alienation of Objects, 2009-2010

Mathilde ter Heijne, Woman to Go, 2005, postcard installation

Mathilde ter Heijne, Woman to Go, 2005, postcard installation detail

Oliver Michaels, Lion (2010) & The Mourners (2010)

Oliver Michaels, Lion Detail(2010)

Oliver Michaels, The Mourners (2010)

Oliver Michaels, Lion (2010) & The Mourners (2010) Installation view

Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Busi (Kitty) 2001, DVD

Josh Tonsfeldt, Untitled, 2008, HD video

Zabludowicz Collection, The Alienation of Objects

Zabludowicz Collection Bookstore & Cafe

After spending about an hour travelling through the video galleries, the exhibition leads to the mezzanine level of the chapel where a large hand-full of Ziegler’s sculptures hover over the lower chapel. Even though these were the largest and visually most impressive works of the show, I felt that they turned into punctuation or parentheses for the curated video work which pushed the theme out in so many directions. The faceted aluminium sculptures stand more as museum objects, taking on a direct life of an artifact of process: In lacking a refinement the surface detail is not explored further than the immediate result of the artists dual interpretation and creation. While I felt initially that video work had become a outshining child of the parent installation, this later congealed into a effective experience, a sequence of concept which allows the visitor to enter the world of these questions by experiencing (perhaps unknowingly) Ziegler’s answers, then progressing to an abstract construction, an open-ended platform for observing these themes, then finishing with an exit of the same answers which now have a strengthened context in narrative and media.
The Alienation of Objects is up from 7 October- 12 December 2010
The Chapel at 176 Prince of Wales Road

Roman Signer

Four Rooms, One Artist @ The Swiss Institute

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Fischli & Weiss, Installation, Roman Signer, Swiss, video The Swiss Institute

5 December 2010

This post was meant to go up a month ago and while the show is no longer installed I still want to share these images. This is one of the few solo exhibitions that Roman Signer, the Swiss artist from St. Gallen, has had in the United States. Titled ‘Four Rooms, One Artist’ at the Swiss Institute in Soho, the show was a combination of installation and video documentation dealing with Signer’s signature scientific object experimentation- one of his newer videos show an Eames chair for instance moving swiftly down a river- an object whose function is normally induced by human needs, but finely addresses the relationship that fluidity has both in the subjects of the video and the video as subject. ” All of Signer’s actions are carefully choreographed. As well as working in his studio, which he calls his lab, Signer often takes off to the Swiss mountains to conduct larger experiments. “I’m no scientist”, he maintains, ” I’m a tinkerer.” The sense of the home experiment of course makes his results resonate so powerfully with immediate and fantastic transformations, a chair rocking next to a lone guest at the opening instantly gives them spiritual company; the umbrellas tied together in his Umbrella video become more of an unruly animal than the inanimate, humanly-employable plastic and nylon structure.

Because Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go, Fischli & Weiss 1987) was a profound moment in my comprehension and admiration of video work, it is a rare and lucky find to see a show of museum quality on such a small, intimate scale by an artist who essentially pioneered and inspired that way of using the medium of video, objects and natural phenomena almost 30 years ago.

Thank you to the Swiss Institute for supplementing my images. For more information their press release is quoted at the end of the post.

Roman Signer, Piano, 2010, Image courtesy of the Swiss Institute

Roman Signer, Piano, 2010

Roman Signer, Piano Detail, 2010 Image courtesy of the Swiss Institute

Roman Signer, Piano Detail, 2010

Roman Signer, Shirt (2010) and Two Umbrellas, Iceland (2008) installation view, Image courtesy of the Swiss Institute

Two Umbrellas Detail, Iceland (2008)

PV Installation View

Installation View

Roman Signer, Cinema (detail view), 2010 Image courtesy of the Swiss Institute

Roman Signer, Cinema (detail view), 2010

Roman Signer, Waiting for Harold Edgarton, 2010 Image courtesy of the Swiss Institute

”

Even though many of the works by Roman Signer do not deal with explosions, but rely on water, wind, sand, electricity, and fire, people tend to remember the experiments that blow up. All of Signer’s actions are carefully choreographed. As well as working in his studio, which he calls his lab, Signer often takes off to the Swiss mountains to conduct larger experiments. “I’m no scientist,” he maintains, “I’m a tinkerer.” Many of his happenings are not for public viewing, and are only documented in photos and film.

This exhibition at the Swiss Institute is divided into four rooms. The first room presents Piano (2010), which is comprised of a grand piano that is filled with table tennis balls. Two oscillating fans are placed on either side of the instrument. The gentle airflow causes the balls to dance on the chords, creating ambient music. The second room presents Cinema (2010) an installation with rows of wooden chairs and a projected film. In the back of the room, one chair mysteriously rocks back and forth, as if led by an invisible hand. The video is a transfer of one of the artist’s “Restenfilm,” or “leftovers,” clips of experiments that were never constituted into artworks and shots of places or events that are of particular interest to Signer. In the third room, three respective video projections of recent actions are shown: Shirt (2010); Two Umbrellas, Iceland (2008); and Office Chair (2010). The fourth and last room hosts the installation, Waiting for Harold Edgerton (2010), a minimal intervention that deliberately remains enigmatic. It gestures to the American photographer, who was well known for his speed photography and perpetuated as “the man who made time stand still.”

It is in the bathtub that Roman Signer develops the ideas for his creations (an important detail in case you book him a hotel room). He then tests them as simple setups in his studio. That is often far from easy; but the failures and adjustments generate new concepts. Roman Signer has been creating his unique sculptures for over 30 years, earning praise and recognition all over the world. And he does not seem to run out of ideas.”

Curated by Gianni Jetzer

With kind support of Hauser & Wirth, Zurich London New York and Kulturförderung Kanton St.Gallen and Swisslos.

Turning the World Upside Down

Anish Kapoor at the Serpentine Gallery/ Kensington Gardens

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Anish Kapoor, Kensington Gardens, outdoor installation, Serpentine Gallery, sky, Stainless steel

12 October 2010

From the 28th of September 2010 through March 13th 2011 Anish Kapoor, the Serpentine Gallery and The Royal Parks present four large scale, stainless steel sculptures in Kensington Gardens; Sky Mirror in the round pond, C-curve, Sky mirror on The Longwater and Non-Object (Spire). These have become part of my morning and evening commute and through this I’ve been witness to their states throughout different times of day. The highly polished surfaces change the presence of the objects, camouflaging them almost completely at night and producing a cinematic surface by day. This creates frenzies of viewers on the weekends, children observing their relationship to the pieces, especially the C-curve as it flips the reflection upside down on one side. Vanity is not necessarily accounted for as one of the aims at staring into these pieces- they distort any qualities and incorporate them into a larger reflective surface pattern and many people seem to stand aimlessly assessing the constantly shifting, surreality of their interaction.

Sky Mirror in the afternoon, Round Pond

Sky Mirror in the afternoon, Cloud Detail, Round Pond

Non-Object (Spire) in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Reflection Detail, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the afternoon, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the afternoon on The Longwater, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror in the afternoon, Cloud detail, The Longwater, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror in the evening, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror and the Statue of Energy in the evening, Hyde Park

Sky Mirror in the evening on The Longwater, Hyde Park

C-curve in the evening, Kensington Gardens

C-curve in the evening with visitors, Kensington Gardens

Non-Object (Spire) in the evening, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the evening, The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

Non-Object (Spire) in the morning, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the morning, The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

C-Curve in the morning, Kensington Gardens

Sky Mirror in the morning, The Longwater, Kensington Gardens

Pretty Much Everything

Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin @ Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Amsterdam, Balenciaga, Bjork, books, Fantastic Man, Foam, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin M/M Paris, Marcel Feil, Olivier Zahm, Photography

21 August 2010

Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam is currently featuring “Pretty Much Everything”, a celebratory retrospective titled after the two volume monograph of Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. The work covers the past 25 years from the lenses of the Dutch duo, their collaborations with M/M Paris, fashion campaigns and personal portraits. This further spurs my interest in their success as a working couple, a chemistry exuded through their photographs and most hauntingly when they turn the camera on themselves. In 2008, Fantastic Man published a wonderful interview with Mr. Matadin by Olivier Zahm where he spoke about the duos process. Because of the nature of interviewing half of a couple, there is so much praise and almost a submission of his talent to his claim of Inez’s creative leadership, although I believe that a correlating interview would carry the same messages. As a compliment to the press release and images which Foam has kindly passed along to me, there are a few excerpts from the interview below. “Pretty Much Everything” is running from 25 June- 15 September, 2010. Curated by Marcel Feil. Exhibition design by M/M Paris. Locals and travelers please go see it!

Delfine - Ad Campaign for Balenciaga in collaboration with M/M Paris 2001 © Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin & Anastasia, 1994 © Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

Pretty Much Everything, Foam, Amsterdam, 2010, image courtesy of Foam

“Foam shows 300 photographs spanning 25 years of the duo’s career. Art, fashion and portrait works all exist next to each other. By disregarding any chronological order the combinations of images are based on personal, formal, social, political and intuitive associations that show the way the artists have lived with the images for 25 years.

Inez van Lamsweerde en Vinoodh Matadin launched their international career with the publication of ten pages in the British magazine The Face in 1994. It was here that for the first time in a fashion series the models and the backgrounds were photographed separately and subsequently combined into a single image by use of a computer. The series typified van Lamsweerde and Matadin’s hyper-realistic style and was made to celebrate and subvert fashion within the context of a magazine.” Quoted from Foam’s Press Release. Full text here.

Me Kissing Vinoodh (Passionately), 1999 © Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

Untitled (Head 1), 2008 © Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin & Antony Fantastic Man, 2006 © Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

Björk - Poisson Nageur, 2000 © Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin

Delfine in my apartment

A special edition newspaper was created for the exhibition. Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin ‘Pretty Much Everything’ 1985-2010: 25 photographs + 25 posters with M/M (Paris). Image from Foam website. Newspaper for purchase via Foam website!!!

Fantastic Man Issue no.6 Autumn and Winter 2007-2008

: Fantastic Man Issue no.6 Autumn and Winter 2007-2008

: Fantastic Man Issue no.6 Autumn and Winter 2007-2008

Below excepts are sited from “Fantastic Man” The Gentlemen’s Style Journal, Issue no. 6, Autumn and Winter 2007-2008. pages 88-97. Photography in the article by Inez Van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin. Text by Oliver Zahm. Styling by Joe McKenna

____

“VM: Of the two of us, Inez is the real photographer. I’m more the person who “steals” the pictures.

OZ: Steals the pictures?
VM: Inez directs the model or the subject and I always shoot from a different angle, capturing the same moment from another perspective. Mine see to be more unfinished pictures. Theyre more voyeuistic; they show a completely different sensibility. The people in Inez’s pictures are always looking into the camera. They’re aware of the picture being taken at that moment. Inez is like the lead singer. We always say that it’s like a band, we play together and she’s the voice of our band…But when we’re actually shooting we go with the flow, follow our intuition and feed on the exchange between model and photographer..”

OZ: Do you ever argue before a shoot? Like, does Inez ever want something that you dont?

VM: Oh yeah, that happens. But that’s good. The moment we’re working, we know exactly what we’re doing. Then it’s really organic. It works. Basically every picture we take is a self-portrait- a picture of how we feel at that moment in our life. Are we happy or are we sad? Wild or precise? Whatever it is that’s going on.” page. 97

On the beginnings of their work and development:
“OZ: Your idea was to develop work that had both an artistic side and a commercial side?
VM: Yes, we always said to ourselves that our pictures should be in magazines and also in galleries. We were young and we had very strong opinions, and in a way we were also quite cynical. Which I think is good. We thought we knew everything. I think at first people really had a hard time understanding what we were doing. They thought we were making a parody of fashion. But we loved fashion yet we also wanted to be critical.
OZ: I think your work has a parody side to it, but also a dark side. Something that you don’t understand immediately. It’s funny how you started experimenting with digital possibilities and then later you went into more classical photography.
VM: It was a logical first step for us to do everything on computer and then manipulate everything. But at some point you see that people are following you, doing the same thing and making it worse- over-retouching and making it really bad. So you get the impulse, “Let’s destroy what we’re doing.” We started making rough collages on the computer. Putting a horse face where it doesn’t belong, on top of the image. Or leaving part of the image as a rough cut out. Not making everything perfect and over-retouched because we didnt think that was really interesting. After that we moved to classical photography because it’s so iconic and direct.
OZ: And beautiful.” page. 92

1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces

Victoria & Albert Museum

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: architecture, Architecture Festival, ceramics, design, Helen & Hard Architects, Installation, Japan, London, Malene Hartmann Rasumussen, National Art Library, Norway, Rintala Eggertsson Architects, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Studio Mumbai Architects, Terunobu Fujimori, Tokyo, Treehouse, Victoria & Albert Museum

4 July 2010

For the Architecture Festival in London the V&A hosted seven buildings amongst some of the most impressive collection rooms in the museum. Nineteen architects were originally invited to submit proposals for the project, curated by Abraham Thomas, to create spaces that examined refuge and retreat. All of the buildings are accessible to the surprise of visitors- The Fujimori Beetle House rocks every time one of the allocated six spaces is climbed into. The buildings are both secretive and bold in presence. Studio Mumbai Architects built ‘In Between Architecture’ in the Casts Court, a space full of enormous figures and replicas. The building camouflages itself with a divoted plaster treatment, distinguished only stylistically yet remaining unobstrusive and affectionate towards the looming study replicas of David and company.

Studio Mumbai Architects in the Cast Courts

Cast Courts with SMA

David

From the inside

Interior with plaster cast tree

SMA Cast Courts

Terunobu Fujimori’s Beetle House was hosted in the Medieval & Rennaissance Room. The structure, in keeping with Fujimori’s style, possesses many dreamlike and spiritual sensitivities. This one in particular is a close replica of another Beetle House that he created in Japan, spanning two tree’s in the forrest. He built the structure from pine trees, and the exterior was charred onsite in the museum. The interior is grained with smaller bits of the charred wood, adorned with sparse belongings, a small bicycle to represent transport to the home, and a teaset designed by the Danish artist Malene Hartmann Rasmussen. Fujimori, since the opening, has hosted several tea ceremonies ( for six) in the miniscule structure. The whimsical nature of the structure is further enhanced by the wooden medieval spiral-staircase-to-nowhere, and the menacing grid of clay heads mounted onto the nearby brick wall.

Terunobu Fujimori's Beetle's House

Beetle's House in the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries

Descent

Malene Hartmann Rasmussen with her teaset designed for the Beetle House

Charred Walls

Foot Traffic

In the John Madejski Garden lived a literal treehouse designed by Helen & Hard Architects from Stavanger, Norway. The house, titled ‘Ratatosk’ was built from splayed trees, becoming more basket-like and woven as the structure developed in height.

Ratatosk in the John Madejski Garden

Ratatosk

Ratatosk Proposal Model

At the bottom of the National Art Library stairs lived the “Ark” built by Rintala Eggertsson Architects from Oslo and Bodo, Norway. The building allowed three people in at a time to browse books at leisure. The books themselves acted as the interior walls, spine-in, and also as the exterior shell of the building, striating the structure with faded pages.

Ark designed by Helen & Hard

Reader

Ark Detail

Interior

From the entrance to the National Art Library

Top Floor

The gooooorgeous National Art Library

On the second floor entering the main architecture galleries lived the Inside/ Outside Tree designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects from Tokyo. This was a large faceted structure of plexi-glass which created a semi-enclosed looking glass for one viewer.

Inside Outside Tree

Inside/ Outside

Sou Fujimoto Architects

Pole Dance

by Solid Objectives–Idenburg Liu (SO–IL)
winner of the eleventh annual MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program

by Jonathan Lee

Filed: 2x4, accelerometers, Arup, Florian Idenburg, fluorescent, interactive, iPhone, Jing Liu, mobile, MOMA, MoMA PS1, netting, network, Pole Dance, PS1, sensors, SO-IL, yoga balls, Young Architects Program

26 June 2010

Thursday, June 24, marked the completion and private preview of Pole Dance, SO-IL’s summer pavilion for MoMA PS1. A field of 30ft poles mounted on movable wind sail joints covers the entire outdoor courtyard with a canopy of white netting. The poles and netting are bungeed into place, allowing visitors to shake and sway the elastic structure creating ripples of motion across the network. A series of colorful interventions complete the system: fluorescent yoga balls, hammocks, pull rings and a wading pool offer obstruction, rest and play to all museum participants.

Entry view

Shadows

Push Pull & Play

Rest & Relaxation

Wading Pool

pool floaty inspired bench

in use

the crowd

During the New York summer, take every opportunity to drink outdoors. Designer Geoff Han with Florian Idenburg, SO-IL partner

Jing Liu, SO-IL partner with Yoonjai Choi, 2x4

Ilias Papageorgiou, SO-IL project lead

In addition to working on a visual identity and promotional materials for PD, we (2×4) collaborated with SO-IL and Arup Acoustics to develop an interactive soundspace in the axillary courtyard. Eight poles in the courtyard are embedded with accelerometers, similar to ones found in your iPhone. As users shake the poles, sound is generated from speakers mounted on the courtyard walls that correspond to the vibrations of the poles. iPhone users can also log on to poledance.ps1.org and collaboratively control the sounds coming from the speakers, or watch a series of visualizations in real time.

Auxillary courtyard

iPhone Webapp located at poledance.so-il.org

There were a lot of great people that donated their time and energy to making this happen. Checkout the Pole Dance website for full details. MoMA PS1’s Summer Warm Up series kicks off next Saturday, July 3 and Pole Dance is open to the public in the courtyard of MoMA PS1. Get your ass outside for some music and interactive architecture. This summer is gonna be awesome.

Orange Alert

Greater New York

PS1

Storm King Art Center

The View from Here: Storm King at Fifty

by Jonathan Lee

Breakable: Glass by Design

15 June 2010

Last Saturday in a balmy, Mountainville, New York, Storm King Art Center celebrated its 50th anniversary with an exhibition that explored its rich sculptural history. Part of the historic Hudson River Valley, Storm King features over 100 sculptures on an lush 500 acre estate, making it a “singular haven” for experiencing some of the most renowned twentieth century sculptors in a pristine and unspoiled environment.

The anniversary exhibition is located within the French-Normandy style mansion, and leads visitors through Storm King’s history, archival documents, exhibition timelines, landscape architecture, and the many processes and conservation concerns for some it’s major pieces (illustrated by artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Alexander Calder, Alexander Liberman, and Loise Bourgeois). The rooms of the mansion are beautiful and offers views of the sprawling estate, and sculptures in the distance.

The View from Here

Exhibition detail

Room

3D CNC Model and projected history Storm King

Projection Mapping

Model Detail

Calder timeline and model of The Arch

Calder Model

Model of Five Swords by Calder

louise bourgeois - conservation room

David Smith Room

David Smith Detail

The grounds featured over 100 works from the permanent collection, and the landscape was absolutely stunning. I could have easily spent far more than the 4 hours I allotted to my visit. The 2010 season closes in November, and I highly recommend a visit. Sculpture heaven.

Louise Nevelson, City on a High Mountain, 1983

Alyson Shotz, Viewing Scope, 2006

Kenneth Snelson, Free Ride Home, 1974

Mark di Suvero, Mon Père, Mon Père, 1975-75

(rear) Stephen Talasnik, Stream: A Folded Drawing, 2009-10

Sol Lewitt, Five Modular Units, 1971

Mark di Suvero, Jambalaya, 2002-06

Mark di Suvero, Old Grey Beam, 2007/2010

Andy Goldsworthy, Storm King Wall, 1997-98

Richard Serra, Schunnemunk Fork, 1990-91

Maria Elena González, You & Me, 2010

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Sarcophagi in Glass Houses, 1989

Alexander Liberman, Iliad, 1974-76

South Fields with longview to Mark di Suvero's Beethoven's Quartet, 2003 and Pyramidian, 1987/1998

Robert Grosvenor, Untitled, 1970

David von Schlegell, Untitled, 1972

Tal Streeter, Endless Column, 1968

Meadows

Alexander Calder, The Arch, 1975

Alexander Calder, Five Swords, 1976

American Design Club & Heller Gallery

by Melissa Gamwell

28 May 2010

From May 7th- 28th American Design Club and Heller Gallery presented a show of works in glass by emerging designers. The show was the fifth in running by the AmDC since their establishment in 2008, and coincided with design week in New York. Here are some images from the private view (where noted credited images are via Heller Gallery’s website)

Heller Gallery

The Breakable show is overflowing with comparative interest to the contemporary glass work of the applied arts field. Heller Gallery typically focuses their curation on contemporary glass artists and the AmDC promotes emerging designers through shows normally based on conceptual themes but never before material. I’m lucky to spy on the glass students at the RCA- all making work that is deeply rooted in the interest of material quality and process. Many of them aim to highlight imperfections in the work so as to reveal the process of glass-making which is incredibly time consuming in labour and pursuit of technical skill. The theme of glass puts many designers in an interesting arena because they do not necessarily have the same context and relationship with material as an artist or craftsman whose focus revolves primarily on application and process. Thus their ideas are held in a crossover that one might call applied concept; Some have a stronghold, convincing us that the material is an absolute to the design, while some were less so. Harry Allen’s Steuben submission, ‘Sticks and Stones Bar Set’ is very clearly a concept applied to the theme of glass, contextualizing his cast bones and stones strongly by title and forms that are metaphorically contradictory with glass. The casting process has been very consistent in Allen’s work with his Reality series based around the idea that we should only use existing form. For Steuben he has used this interest in realistic forms to further this conceptual plane with the asset of Steuben’s flawless production of crystal clear casting and glass craft.

Adversely Lara Knutson’s interests stem from material qualities. Her work (below), titled Soft Glass, is made of woven reflective glass fiber which creates rainbows on the contours of the piece, magnifying light 100 times due to 50,000 mircroscopic mirror backed glass beads in every square inch of the fabric. This fiber was woven into a what may be a traditional vessel form which is wonderfully slumped and scalloped because of the inherent material qualities.

Breakable Opening

LARA KNUTSON: SOFT GLASS2010reflective glass fabric, steel wire9"x18" round and flexible 9' h. x 18" diameter/ flexible

Detail

L: HARRY ALLEN with STEUBEN: STICKS AND STONES BAR SET 2010 R: ZAC WEINBERG KOZZIES (ANIMAL STEMS) 2010 glass11 3/4 X 4 X 4 in. (29.85 X 10.16 X 10.16 cm) Photos from Heller Gallery 2010

Title

By design there were also many applications of glass elements in the realms of furniture and jewelry. Matthew Bradshaw and Sergio Silva take advantage of the material structurally, contrasting and combining it with bamboo- arguably two materials that are not perceived as strong but used together to create stunning furniture that is both airy and strong. Annie Lenon uses the ever-nostalgic glass cloche as an aid in her jewelry in order to preserve and hold private relics on your hand for display. The glass form in this instance is more of a referential tool, reminding us of the encyclopedic antiquities of the Wunderkammer.

ANNIE LENON: CLOCHE RING2010glass/silver1-1/2" and 2-1/2" long : Photo from Heller Gallery 2010

ERICA ROSENFELD: TIME CAPSULES 2010glass6 1/4 X 6 X 6 in. (15.88 X 15.24 X 15.24 cm)

MELISSA GAMWELL: ALICE LENS 2010 glass/silver/brushed gold silver lustre6 X 7 X 3 1/2 in. (15.24 X 17.78 X 8.89 cm)1 1/2"d. x 36" chain

MELISSA GAMWELL: ALICE LENS 2010glass/silver/brushed gold silver lustre6 X 7 X 3 1/2 in. (15.24 X 17.78 X 8.89 cm)1 1/2"d. x 36" chain

DYLAN PALMERSEALED AIR2008glass/mixed media10 X 12 X 19 in. (25.4 X 30.48 X 48.26 cm)

MATT BRADSHAW + SERGIO SILVA: L: SMALL BOWL 2010 glass 5 X 7 X 2 in. (12.7 X 17.78 X 5.08 cm) 389-0049 R:GLASS SHELVES 2010 glass/wood 92 X 40 X 12 in. (233.68 X 101.6 X 30.48 cm) Photos from Heller Gallery 2010

MATT BRADSHAW + SERGIO SILVALARGE BOWL2010glass14 X 11 X 7 1/2 in. (35.56 X 27.94 X 19.05 cm)

Designers L-R: Jude Heslin-di Leo, Jonathan Lee, Samuel Cochran, Bernardo Guillermo, Matthew Bradshaw

AO MONTEROSSO: WINE GOBLETS (set of four with funnel) 2010 blown glass/bendy straws7" high x 3" diameter

LINDSEY ADELMAN: WITH NANCY CALLAN CLUSTER CHANDELIER 2010 glass/lighting fixture 33 X 16 X 16 in. (83.82 X 40.64 X 40.64 cm) Photos from Heller Gallery 2010

L: JEFF DUNDAS / SUPERNATURAL & Co. CEIIINOSSSSTTUU 2010 glass 15 X 15 X 15 in. (38.1 X 38.1 X 38.1 cm) R: SARA MUSSELMAN WISHGLASSES 2010 glass 10 X 7 X 3 in. (25.4 X 17.78 X 7.62 cm) Photos from Heller Gallery 2010

This week in London the RCA Show One has opened with the graduate work from the Schools of Applied Arts so the upcoming post will cover some of their glass work for contrast. The Breakable show presented 29 designers who are not all shown here but I strongly encourage a look at the Heller Gallery website to see the full exhibition.

Impact Show

RCA Design Interactions & EPSRC

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: design, Design Interactions, EPSRC, RCA

Springtime Cosmic Newsstand

26 May 2010

This is being posted extremely late as this show was held in March! Impact was an amazing showcase of collaborative work between the Royal College of Art Design Interactions department and research teams from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). All of the work was based on the interaction of science & technology with humanitarian progression. The work was all shown with display models and some working prototypes along with the statements from each team. They have an excellent website which has more information on all of this research and also about where the show is travelling. All of the text below has been quoted from the statements found in the Impact Show catalogue which was published in conjunction with the opening at the RCA.

: Phosporous Umbrella

: Urine Apron for the collection of phosphates

The above two images are from Astronomical Bodies, created by Michael Burton and Dr. Terence Kee.

“Did life on earth emerge from key chemical elements received from outer space? If so, the universe can be seen as bio-friendly and life as a natural part of the universe. If we think of ourselves as astro-biological products of galactic composition, should we continue to colonise space with life? What if we collect phospate from our urine and kidney stones, and create meteorites? These could be sent into space to seed life on other habitable planets, initiating a process of self-assembly evolution.”

: Astronomical Bodies Umbrella at the Reception

Below are images from “Cellularity” created by James King, Prof Cameron Alexander, Prof Lee Cronin, Prof Ben Davis and Dr Natalio Krasnogor.

“Is biology technology? Are we ready for industries and products based on organisms and cells? To deal with questions such as these we need a new understanding of how living and non-living things differ from one another. The Cellularity Scale is intended to be a first draft of a definition of life that is applicable in a future where we no longer ask whether omething is dead or alive, but instead, how alive it is.”

Detail

(Below) “Pathogen Hunter” created by Susana Soares, Mikael Metthey, Prof Calum McNeil & Prof Colin Harwood.

“This design project explores how disease monitoing might change our perception of health etiquette Surveilance personnel- Pathogen Hunters- would be trained to use very particular tools to manage infectious outbreaks. But no matter how clean we are or how healthy we feel, we still carry billions of microbes on our bodies. Will we change our behavior to prevent the spread of pathogens to others? What will the consequences be for our social conventions?

Pathogen Hunters

PH Detail

(Below) “Fabulous Fabbers” Created by David Benque, Prof Marc Desmulliez & David Topham.

“Factories are moving away from the fringes and coming to town! Advances in micro-scale engineering point to a global-scale revolution where local, disposable factories produce high-tech good on out very doorstep. What form might this new way of ‘making things’ take within out urban landscape? from garage- workshops to circus-like structures, form street vendor stalls to vagabond encampment, these new factories could also bring back ownership of the tools of production.”

Fabulous Fabbers

FF Detail

Below is the 5th Dimensional Camera, designed by Anab Jain, Jon Ardern, Prof John Rarity, Prof Andrew Briggs & Dr Simon Benjamin

“To explore the impact this mind- blowing science could have on our sense of place and purpose in the universe, ‘The 5th Dimensional Camera’ is a fictional device that captures glimpses of parallel universes suggested by quantum physics. How might we seek to interact with these other worlds? Would we become jealous of our parallel selves? What would happen to out sense of morality if we knew that we had committed inconceivable acts in another world?”

The 5th Dimensional Camera

“Phantom Recorder” designed by Revital Cohen, Prof James Fawcett, Dr Richard Eva & Dr Stephanie P. Lacour.

“When a limb is lost, the mind often develops a phantom sensation. The phantom owner is suddenly endowed with a unique and personal appendage, invisible to others and sometimes capable of extraordinary hyperabilities. As strategies for repair ficus on practical solutions, they ten to overlook poetic functions of the body, but what if one could record and keep one’s phantom sensation, to be awoken on request?”

Detail

“Synthetic Immune System” designed by Tuur Van Balen, Prof Richard Kitney, Prof Paul Freemont & James Chappell

“Synthetic biology’s potential to make healthcare more personal and participatory cold allow us to become out own doctors and pharamcists; constantly monitering and tweaking our body. It might even allow us to externalise our immune system by outsourcing metabolic processes to external micro-organisms. Such a synthetic immune system would be tailored to one’s genetic predisposition, age, lifestyle and anxieties.”

Detail

“Happy Life” designed by James Auger, Prof Reyer Zwiggelaar, Dr Richard M. Turley & Dr Bashar Al-Rjoub.

“In the context of national security, invasive technology is accepted becaus the worst-case scenario would be infinitely worse. These technologies though often filter into everyday life where their application has a far more questionable presence. What would it mean to introduce such technology into the family home; when an electronic device can know more about your partner’s state than you do? Or can predict an incoming bout of misery through statistical analysis of accumulated data.”

Detail

“Unknown Unknowns” is a project by Onkar Kular, Prof Denis Smith & Dr Moira Fischbacher. This was a beautiful project ( my favorite from the show).

“Unknown unkowns is a multimedia reasearch library for an imaginary film. The film revolves around the worst-case scenario of a mid air collision over Wembley Stadium on FA Cup Final day. The library consists of texts for auditions, location analysis and stunt coordination, as well as computer simulation of fights, supporting photographic studies and objects. The library provides a platform to probe key themes and techniques that characterise the complex nature of crisis management and risk analysis.”

Unknown Unknowns

Detail of stadium

Detail

Presented by Ecstatic Peace Library at Partners & Spade

by Jonathan Lee

Filed: absinthe, books, Ecstatic Peace Library, Eva Prinz, newsprint, opening, Partners & Spade, performance, publishing, Sonic Youth, spring, Thurston Moore

15 April 2010

Last Sunday evening, Ecstatic Peace Library held a pop up event at Partners & Spade on 40 Great Jones Street. The brainchild of Andy Spade and Anthony Sperduti, Partners & Spade is half curiosity shop/half design consultancy, providing a perfect venue for Thurston Moore and Eva Prinz’s Ecstatic Peace Library publishing imprint. This was the final event in a series of promotional nights for EPL, promoting Kim Gordon’s latest book, Kim Gordon, The Noise Paintings. I narrowly missed Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore performing as Mirror/Dash the night before at another event space Thirty Days NY. Fortunately I captured Thurston & Daniel performing which you can watch at the very end of this post.

Ecstatic Peace Library Newspaper

Multicolored Harp

Reading (Over the shoulder)

Partners & Spade

If you don't know, just ax somebody

Absinthe Punch by Eva

I am adding some stills from the performance, in case you can’t sit through the whole thing (it’s 20 mins). But it’s seriously awesome so why wouldn’t you? Many thanks to Partners & Spade and Ecstatic Peace Library for their generosity in providing a wonderful end to the weekend.

Video

Two/Four Considerations

Art Bin + Hans Stofer

by Melissa Gamwell

26 March 2010

Recently I visited Michael Landy’s Art Bin at South London Gallery, followed in the evening by the new exhibition at Gallery S O, an installation by Hans Stofer. The two shows were both examining objects and process; Landy, very specifically in the failures of making them and Stofer capitalizing on moments of flux in making, embracing the ability of knowing when to stop with a series of still lives and installations.

In the morning at the Art Bin-I literally threw one of my Biography Vases into the giant steel frame/plexi box. It was the second to last day and by that time the bin boasted a huge pile of creative wreckage, including some notable failures from artists such as Damien Hirst and Gillian Wearing. I had the idea that if I could get my vase to perhaps shatter on top of one of the more famous failures it could be worth the material cost. NOT THE POINT and didnt happen anyway.

South London Gallery

My experience in throwing porcelain. hahaha.

Landy’s initiative for the project was to question the ownership, implications of destruction, value and preciousness. Interestingly, while so many artists dropped their work into what the artist called a “monument of creative failure” there was still image protection on the bin, not because of Mr. Landy but because every artist had not signed the release for the work to be photographed. This made it quite clear that the totality did not truly consider their work as a subject of creative failure, but rather a means of publicity- letting go is absolute release no!? So unfortunately the only pictures i could take were the exterior of the gallery (which is good for those who dont know what it looks like) and a picture that the gallery attendant took of me throwing it in.

Later I headed to Gallery S O, for the opening of a show by Hans Stofer, who is head of the GSM&J department at the RCA. The exhibition showcased collections of household objects alongside his metalwork and jewelry. In these still lives he examines both the chaotic and organizational beauty that exists within a collection. There were readymades that had been slightly altered, side by side with more conceptual metalwork and jewelry, the incorporation showed a heeded consideration to what goes on beyond a creative endeavor, acknowledging studio surroundings to be as much a piece of work as the work itself.

A wall sported glasses hung by oversized man-head nails. By the door three boxes with protective glass covers, housed collections of tableware covered in foil, and spun across the door was a wedding band held captive by a metal spiderweb. Metalwork & jewelry is a genre of the arts which like many others, is best viewed when the titular expectation is forgotten- and is one that can be appropriated to any scape, in this case of the Gallery S O, fielding itself as a whimsical studio.

Give me the Swiss passport

Malene and the Silver Cowboy

The Silver Cowboy

Band entangled in metal web

Foil-covered tableware

Detail

Skeleton on the Door of Boats

Sea Glass

Studio Cart

Marlboro Cross

Bucket Stools

Nail Heads

Detail

necklaces

Contemporary Contrast

Independent &
The Armory Show
March 4 — March 7
2010

by Jonathan Lee

14 March 2010

Artists, academics, administrators, auctioneers, benefactors, bloggers, collectors, consumers, critics, curators, editors, educators, gallerists, historians, museum professionals, writers, and the public all play a role in interpreting the value and meaning of art (monetarily, metaphysically and professionally). Not unlike other industries, the art world has its own types of events which collectively shape the product, production and dissemination of art. Of all events (openings, exhibitions, symposia, biennials etc) the art fair seems the most overtly commercial, where galleries stand side by side competing for the art world’s attention and hopefully, investment. I visited two very different art fairs last week and learned a lot about the specific type of value I look to derive from art itself, but raised many more questions about art as commodity and the forums used to generate commerce.

The entrance to the Independent – "Please god make tomorrow better" Claire Fontaine

The Independent was packaged as a hybrid art fair organized by gallerists Elizabeth Dee and Darren Flook in what use to be the Dia:Chelsea building on west 22nd. The approach and organization of the temporary exhibition was similar to a massive group show of galleries instead of a group show about artists. The show split the four floors between 40 galleries and was free and open to the public during the NY art fair weekend. I found it refreshing that the galleries and organizers where able to allow for a fair amount of presentation and coherence within the open and relatively un-programmed floor spaces. Each floor used some simple layout and temporary walls (and sometimes exhibit objects) to differentiate itself from the last. In the stairwell, a Dan Flavin light installation connected each floor together while making everyone look blue.

Dan Flavin Installation

Stairwell

The crowd at the opening was young and fashionable. If they weren’t young they must have been young at heart because I don’t remember seeing any misfits of the profile. The great thing about any young and burgeoning scene is the intense nature of it’s participants. Everyone I saw at the opening whom I knew and chatted with, eventually left me to GO CHECKOUT THE WORK.

Giant inflatable (and deflating) rat reciting the ABC's from Glengary GlenRoss

Gabby watching Ryan Trecartin at the Elizabeth Dee reinstallation of "P.opular S.ky (section ish)", 2009

Detail, Ryan Trecartin "P.opular S.ky (section ish)", 2009

"360 illusion II" by Jeppe Hein – two rotating mirrored planes turn the room top side down and back again

DMC12 aka the DeLorean - for Duncan Campbell's documentary film "Make It New John"

My least favorite room was a collaborative effort from the high-end design retail store Moss and independent art curators, Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner. The room was the only “exclusive” room in the show and was presented as an exhibit within an exhibit. It was titled “this that & then some” and paired design objects with art objects and presented them as a grouping. My initial distaste of the mini-exhibit did not stem from a dislike of the objects or their pairings, which were harmless and seemed about as related as anything else in the fair – it came from a deeper discomfort with the portrayal of design as equal to or symbiotic with art object. It was as if design was bullying into the art world through a hollow and arranged marriage with little meaning or respect for either partner. It really seemed to disservice both the art/design objects and the work that had to go into them, because the work individually was beautiful and good.

Stanze di Raffaello II, Rome by Thomas Struth and Illuminated Crucifix by Michal Fronek & Jan Nemecek

"Untitled" (cube) by Sol LeWitt and "The Other: square side table" by Ilse Crawford

My favorite work by far was a video by Jordan Wolfson that portrayed coke bottles filled with milk marching across the screen through an abandoned urban landscapes. There while a female voice reciting her inner thoughts aloud and occasionally taking vocal stage direction from a quieter male voice. The coke bottles changed in number but continually walk through the landscape making a gravely crunching noise as they go. Sometimes the orientation of the screen begins to rotate lazily as you tumble through the dark recesses of this woman’s mind. It was trippy, but gripping and real.

Still from "Con Leche" by Jordan Wolfson

I left the Independent and headed uptown in a rickshaw driven by JC, who was wearing a hot pink polka-dot suit and a tinsel cape. If you ever see him around you should go for a ride. He took me to the Armory Show on west 55th for a deal because he is super nice and said he said he was getting a little bored. On the way there we talked about art and a zombie video he was shooting in Bushwick. This only happens in New York.

Going for a ride on the nicest day — ever.

If you google “art fair” the Armory Show comes up third in the results list, not exactly scientific but enlightening none the less. The Armory Show is a massive event, located on the piers 92 and 94, drawing thousands of visitors at $30 a ticket. It is America’s “leading” art fair and pulls both international artists (or their galleries) and international visitors in waves and hordes. You can find unknown or lesser known artists in a little white cubicle right next to the biggest headline grabbing art stars. And maybe that is the problem. There is no way to navigate this fair in any meaningful way beyond the mode of shopping. You are in an art mall, the difference between this and a museum is that you can buy this work and you can take pictures and there are no security guards to stop you.

Welcome to the art mart.

Olafur Eliasson's photos of vehicles and crossings

Taking the opportunity to reflect. hahaha

british bad boys g&g

"Cinemap – eleven films on request" Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Not to say it was all bad. One of the highlights for me was the Josephine Meckseper installation at Elizabeth Dee’s space at the Armory Show. It was an extremely surface oriented installation comprising of mirrored, shiny, pop, facist, and sexist (or sexy) items, and I immediately felt and appreciated the irony of the situation and it’s juxtaposition at the show.

Josephine Meckseper

During fair weekend the Armory is the main event and all the other events seem to be the side shows. The Armory is simply a massive “establishment”. It is a necessary and important event that brings some of the world’s best artists and galleries to the greater NY public – but I don’t think that is good enough. I bring a lot expectation to the table when considering the two shows, one is established, rich and ticketed, the other young, open, and free. The Armory Show has a slew of corporate sponsors, there was an Acura SUV next to the stairs, the only car at the Independent was a Delorean and I don’t think you could buy it (unverified). I imagine I am the wrong demographic for the Armory Show: I am not rich, I do not collect art, and the value I derive from art tends to be for creative, inspirational and sometimes professional reasons. The two shows couldn’t have felt more opposite and I wonder if it is time to replace the outmoded, unspecific art mall and create something in between the two fairs? Can a niche, curated art fair remain small and focused, but function well monetarily for the gallerists and subsequently the artists they represent? This raises some questions for me about how to be profitable in the art world, I imagine it is no small task or even one that can have accurate formulas or models for projection. I guess the simplest way to look at it is that first, the art is created. Everything else that follows is some form of commerce of that art’s secondary markets. So what can we try next?

"the handle comes up the hammer comes down" by doug aitken

Christian Gonzenbach

Domestic Wildlife Collection @ Gallery S O

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: animals, ceramics, Christian Gonzenbach, Duke Riley, Fondazione Prada, Gallery S O, identity, meteors, natural history, New York Times, RCA, skin, spirits, Swiss, Tom Sachs, Whales

23 February 2010

Last Thursday a gaping pair of ostrich-leg boots patiently awaited a recipient at the closing reception of Christian Gonzenbach’s show at Gallery S O titled “Domestic Wildlife Collection”. It was here that a discussion started earlier in the day at the RCA continued; a discussion on his theories of whales. The Swiss artist studies histories and processes, how an animal or object achieves its identity through physicality and material composition. This is done in the language of nature and animals, with the use of skins, addressing and asking questions of the interior and exterior, of material and spiritual possessions. When does an animal become and animal, and how much needs to be removed before it attains a new purpose, perhaps a functional marketable skin? What is the molecular and spiritual composition of identity?

Gallery SO, Domestic Wildlife Collection

Inside-Out Pets

Ostrich Leg Boots

Gonzenbach was recently working on a mold of a whale, coating the inside surface with a self-formulated skin of clay and plaster, painted black. While the whale would never exist, the mold became a fossil. He stated that for him whales were imaginary, that he was from the mountains, not the ocean, and since humans no longer have a (legal) trade relationship with these creatures, we justify them in our minds based on modern mythologies instead of first-hand informed practices. When whaling was a valid business, people had to accomodate themselves to this size, creating machines and tools based on a mammoth scale, solidifying their existence.

The presumption of what makes the world we inhabit as it is, remains a human condition that he investigates and humorizes. We cant possibly experience or see the instigations of all form but we wonder. It wasn’t until after attempting to recount my experiential whales, I realized that with the exception of rather small beluga whales in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the famous, undying Shamu at Seaworld in 1993, I had never actually seen a whale in its habitat. Even on a whale watching boat off the coast of Maine, I spent hours with my parents and sisters imagining that each little white-capped wave would manifest into a fin or blowhole, to the point where it was a hallucinatory game- there were beyond doubt whales under the surface but none to be seen!

This presumption of experience is normal, and it made me assess how much of my knowledge is physically uninformed- the answer being most of it. Something as ancient as a whale is a poetic example of how severe this condition may be, and there is certainly the psychology of the oceanic unknown that renders it a beautiful example of loss. The philosophy of this thought is hundreds of books deep – my notion a miniscule particle topping an iceberg that I’ve heard is mostly submerged.

Inside-Out Donkey

Gallery Detail

Stop animation of Chicken and Weasel exchanging skins

Eraser Arrowheads

Clay bear shot with gun

Meteor

Similarly to the whale mold, Gonzenbach creates his own meteors, not by sculpting a meteor but by creating the matter that would violently and gradually deteriorate a substance; Throwing rocks at clay. When I think of meteors there are massive rocks hurtling themselves towards our stratosphere, but of course I assume this is what happens, based only on the knowledge of huge blemish-like craters in the midwest and the shards of specimens in Natural History museums.

This work made me think of these two projects- which while being slightly different in conception, still represent the solidification of imaginary experience and the replication of an iconic source of greed and commerce.

Photo by Damon Winter for The New York Times

“The artist Duke Riley does some last minute work before launching his replica of a Revolutionary War-era submarine, built of plywood and fiberglass and ballasted with lead, off Pier 41 in Red Hook, Brooklyn on Friday August 3, 2007″ Quoted from the New York Times article.

Balaenoptera Musculus by Tom Sachs. Photo is copyright of Tom Sachs

“For the other installation, Balaenoptera Musculus (2006), a life-sized reconstruction of an 18-metre long blue whale, Tom Sachs took his inspiration from the whale model hanging in the ocean life hall at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York. The whale, which, for its size, Sachs calls adolescent, is made in foam core, cardboard, and white polyurethane foam, a material often used or architectural models. ” Quoted from the Fondazione Prada Press Release.

Sulki & Min Choi

More and Less +
Documents of Transient Art

A studio visit from graphic designers and proprietors of Specter Press — based in Seoul, Korea.

by Jonathan Lee

Filed: architecture, art, books, design, discussion, graphic design, Jan van Eyck Academie, korea, printing, seoul, sulki & min choi, yale

18 February 2010

Sulki & Min Choi stopped by to show us some of their work and talk about their recent activities. It was really great to meet graphic designers who are operating with such a strong conceptual approach to their work. They also shared a range of books and posters from their imprint Spector Press. Both are Yale MFA Grads and were researchers at JVE prior to establishing a permanent practice in Korea. They are really great people and great designers so check them out and order some books.

Min & Sulki

Many nice things to look at

Sasa 44: Annual Report 2006

Cover Sasa 44: Annual Report 2006

Perspecta 35, Excercise in Modern Construction part 3, Our Spot: New York

1/4: Oriëntatie

SKMoMA Highlights — a ghost publication that mirrors the form of a true MoMA Highlights catalog. Featuring the works of Korean contemporary artists, for the fictitious South Korea Museum of Modern Art.

SKMoMA Highlights — spreads mirroring each other

Catalog for Hyungkoo Lee’s solo exhibition at the Korean Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 2007.

stills from slideshow

still from slideshow

sharing

looking

thanks to sulki & min

Jasper Morrison

Jugs, Jars & Pitchers @ The Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: ceramics, design, Design Real, form, Forum Magazine, function, glass, Hallwyl Museum, Jasper Morrison, Konstantin Grcic, London, London Design Week, object, Serpentine Gallery, specimen, Stockholm, Stockholm Furniture Fair

16 February 2010

This past week I took some work and travelled for the first time to Stockholm for the furniture fair. I was fortunate and thrilled to hear that Jasper Morrison was exhibiting his specimen collection of jugs, jars and pitchers, having missed it at London Design Week last September. Tucked away in the century-old, basement kitchen of art collector Wilhelmina von Hallwyls’ antique-laden residence, the show was a great relief to the peripheral week of modern scandinavian furniture.

The kitchen seemed to be the only room in the house that wasn’t surfaced in decorative collections, appropriately so for Morrison’s ideology of “super normal”, purely function-based design. The collection is a hand-picked group, plucked from thrift stores, flea markets and Morrison’s own home. Representing everyday life, which is the circumstance of pure function, the collection has a wonderful lack of pretention about its proposition of what makes vessels function as they do. The presentation is made without added context, the purpose is to simply observe typologies of jugs, jars & pitchers.

As I am studying ceramic design, I found this collection to be a pop-up text book of function. An imperative question for design is why a new form should exist to serve the same purpose as millions of existing specimens are floating around in the object stratosphere. Morrison is a designer who observes his predessesors, and offers new proposals, combining functional success and removing hindering qualities of form and material. In the end his objects are equal in their visual anonymity, adding to the progressive timeline of industrial function. This could not be done without this level of observation.

Hallwyl Museum Kitchen

Detail

Watering Can

Teapot Specimen

To see this exhibition which is essentially pure research, without the glamour and pretention of a gallery was an interesting contrast to another show in London curated by designer Konstantin Grcic, titled ”Design Real” at the Serpentine Gallery. The work of both designers is exclusively function-based, although Grcic perhaps implies more biographical form to his work than Morrison. The show at the Serpentine presents functional design as sterilized gallery work, by having plinths, white walls and minimal description; It proposes function by the standard of art, removing the observers inclination to get extremely close or touch. Morrison’s show on the other hand eliminates the gallery logic entirely, and uses a functional space to display functional objects- it could potentially be mistaken for the work of a neurotic house-keeper. The designer/curator is something that is being seen more and more as disciplines aggressively and publicly use one other in collaborations. Based on these two shows, what the designer, or maker, presents is seemingly more valuable in the aspect of proven observation, of what designers are competing with and what they deem successful.

Stove Detail

Specimens

Detail

Hallwyl Kitchen

Hallwyl Museum: Hamngatan 4, 111 47 Stockholm

The exhibition “Jugs, Jars & Pitchers” is presented by Forum magazine and Henrik Nygren Design.

Forum is the Magazine for Scandinavian Architecture, Interiors and Design. Issue no.1 for 2010 includes an excellent article based on discussion with Morrison in regards to his new show.

If You Could Collaborate

@ A Foundation Gallery

by Melissa Gamwell

Peter Fischli & David Weiss

27 January 2010

Last week London art directors Will Hudson and Alex Bec launched their fourth annual show titled If You Could Collaborate. The show featured 33 pairings of designers and artists at A Foundation Gallery, all who were given 12 months to produce across disciplinary borders. Collaboration seems to be one of those methods that for me, seemingly for the RCA, is divinely attractive. I am finding in my recent attempts that it is not always magical and I think I brought a little screen of skepticism with me when seeing this work, which for the most part diminished after considering the different approaches. Certain pieces in here seem holistic in concept, material usage, and aesthetic; Others are perfect specimens of two ideas, two ways of working that form visible hybrids of styles. Having seen the gamut of approaches I found some that were logical, expected, and others that had less refined outcomes. Either way- it seemed like the point, whichever side of the fence they landed on. This show had no shortage of conceptual depth or eye candy- definitely looking forward to next years!

There is an excellent catalog available here. Below are some images and links to both sides of the collaborations. Project descriptions where quoted are taken from the If You Could website:

Praline + The Model Shop:

“Praline have been creating brilliant design solutions for many years, from publications and branding, to websites and exhibitions. Always looking to add humour and clarity to their work, they’re not put off by the size of a project, working with both large organisations and smaller outfits, including esteemed clients such as the Pompidou Centre and Tate Modern. After meeting The Model Shop of architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, through a previous commission they decided they’d like to extend their working relationship a little further. Ending up with a new font, and physical scale models interpreting its shapes.”

Praline and The Model Shop

Detail

Ian Wright + Riitta Ikonen

Ian Wright and Riitta Ikonen

Detail of Helmet

Ian Wright and Riitta Ikonen

Max Lamb + Gemma Holt

I first saw some of Max Lamb’s work at the Johnson Trading Gallery in NYC. It happened to be a week before I was moving to London to attend the RCA and ended up finding an adjunct show in Hoxton with more of his work. I felt the piece that Gemma and Max created was an alternative interpretation to the collaborative theme. More so, it considered the circumstance of the show and took the idea of collaboration as a way of doing something site specific rather than an amalgamation of professions. Besides- herringbone is the new houndstooth.

Max Lamb and Gemma Holt

Craig Ward + Sean Freeman + Alison Carmichael

Craig Ward, Sean Freeman & Alison Carmichael

Fred Butler + No Days Off

“A well-loved member of the fashion industry, Fred is a truly influential creative force. Known for making beautiful props and accessories, there’s no more solid proof of her class than knowing she’s worked on commissions for the likes of Vogue, i-D, Dazed & Confused, MTV and Selfridges as well as her own personal collections. With design studio No Days Off, she is launching the Eight Days A Week campaign, petitioning for a little bit extra time….”

Fred Butler & No Days Off

Karl Brandin + And Beyond

“Karl Grandin is a creative who is difficult to shoehorn. You may find him working as one half of design team Vår, as co-founder of fashion label Cheap Monday, or as a successful freelance illustrator. What you won’t find is him producing a bad piece of work. A varied portfolio, which is infused with a swagger of someone with an inherent desire to create.

By collecting familiar elements from flags, detaching them from their sources and putting them back together in new combinations, he and Dutch fashion designers And Beyond have created a new world in the form of an oversized flag.”

Karl Brandin & And Beyond

Marion Deuchars + Margaret Calvert

Marion Deuchars & Margaret Calvert

Rob Ryan and Michael Marriot

“There are a thousand words we could use to describe Rob Ryan’s work, and all of them are superlatives. Hyperbole is something we usually try and steer away from when describing artwork, but it’s tough to do Rob’s work enough justice without it. A combination of heartfelt sentiments, both beautifully depicted and exquisitely cut, confirm you’re in the hands of a true great when presented with a Rob Ryan piece.

Given a canvas to execute his work by Michael Marriott in the form of a flatpack rocking chair, the duo have produced a piece of furniture I’m sure lots of people will want to get their hands on.”

Rob Ryan and Michael Marriot

Job Wouters + Roel Wouters

Job Wouters & Roel Wouters

BCMH + Smith & Wightman

This was one of my favorite pieces in the show. The team created currencies based on production and material cost. I love the idea of objects being tactilely/physically representative of their value and not just conceptually so.

BCMH + Smith & Wightman

Triple the love at Matthew Marks Gallery

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Bear, Black, Casting, ceramics, Chelsea, clay, Fischli and Weiss, Installation, Matthew Marks Gallery, Rat, rubber, Swiss, Tate Modern

10 January 2010

Peter Fischli & David Weiss are basically my favorites from the realm of celebrity artists, and Matthew Marks currently has given them the attention of all three of his Chelsea galleries. This show is almost over! It ends on the 16th and I strongly recommend a visit.

The show is in three parts, the first (in the order that I visited them) is Clay and Rubber at 523 W24th. This show included 26 objects that span the past three decades of the duo’s rubber casting and hand-built clay works. I have seen some of these pieces at their Tate Modern retrospective, but the lot is an amazing spectrum of elemental beauty in objects. The clay pieces are primarily models of machined, recto-linear objects. Marks of the artists hands are proximally apparent, subtly highlighting the surface and distinguishing their over-sized forms from a real smooth-cast brick, sono-tube or chain-link. The rubber objects contrast as casts of natural or highly detailed forms, and the material is often hidden by the original detail of the pieces. Both of the materials engage the viewer and the object, negating the importance of purpose and true material, allowing the pure form of everyday objects to be considered. The gallery was also perfect, in that it didn’t overwhelm the objects with massive space, but was large enough to investigate the pieces with/out the context of the others.

Matthew Marks Gallery@ 523 West 24th

Wood Table, 2005, Black Rubber, 157 x 96 x 45cm

Raven, 1986, Black Rubber, 28 x 41 x 14cm

Chain, 2009, Reinforced clay, 14 x 107 x 14cm

Little Wall, 1987, Black Rubber, 77 x 34 x 41cm

Root, 2005, Black Rubber, 60 80 x 60cm

Stairs, 1987, Black Rubber, 36 x 87 x 53cm

Drawer, 1987, Black Rubber, 14 x 51 x 43cm

Down the street at 522 West 22nd is Sun, Moon and Stars, an exhibition of a book that F&W started as a project for an annual report. The book is pretty daunting to flip through, but here I spent quite a bit of time re-examining the flats which I thought were more successful than the original format in conveying the visual and topical similarities. Below is quoted from the MM press release:

“Sun, Moon and Stars is an encyclopedic accumulation of 800 magazine advertisements culled form hundreds of international periodicals. Begun as a project commissioned by a Swiss corporation for its annual report, the finished project is displayed in thirty-eight wood and glass tables, totaling 330 feet in length. A dizzying reaction to late capitalism in various chromatic groupings, the ads are shown in a specific order that exploits the formal, thematic and color similarities between advertisements.”

Matthew Marks Gallery@ 522 West 22nd

Case Detail

Gallery Detail

Resting next door at 526 West 22nd, are the deflated avatars of Fischli & Weiss, titled Sleeping Puppets. Rat and Bear were first shown in the film The Least Resistance, 1981, and The Right Way, 1983 ( translated dialogue quoted below) Click on the links to watch the films.

“BEAR: Do you see the moon? Look at it carefully.

RAT: I need more stones. We have hardly begun.

BEAR: I’ve been watching it. It’s like me.

It comes and goes.

Always on the move…looks at everything.

It does what it pleases.

RAT: So you want to leave.

BEAR: What am I suppose to do? Are you staying here?

RAT: Now all it needs is a roof

BEAR: Good. I’ll come with you.

RAT: I’ll leave the stones here..

BEAR: …but I’m taking the dream with me

Into the unknown.”

Bye Bye! Matthew Marks Gallery @ 526 West 22nd

Peter Fischli & David Weiss

Matthew Marks Gallery

October 30, 2009- January 16, 2010

Roger Hiorns

Seizure

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: architecture, Artangel, Arts Council England, Blue, Copper Sulphite, Crystals, Installation, James Lingwood, Magic, Modernist, Roger Hirons, Tate Britain, Tokujin Yoshioka, Turner Prize

10 January 2010

Before the end of the year I visited the Turner Prize show at Tate Britain. One of the short-list artists, that fell to the golden Richard Wright, was Roger Hiorns who was nominated for his amazing off-site installation called Seizure. There was no photography allowed at the Tate but I was able to get some shots of ”Seizure” which was installed in an abandoned 1970’s council building at Elephant & Castle.

While waiting on this line I had vague notions of what was inside the building, which is that Mr. Hiorns crystallized the space with copper sulphate. Additionally I was given these instructions, and an interview which I am including excerpts from below.

“Take great care when entering and leaving. There is a step. Walk slowly and carefully throughout. The floor is very uneven. Mind your head. Surfaces are sharp, and many crystals hang down. You may touch the walls but please dont break or damage the crystals. Do not attempt to climb or sit on the surfaces.”

Installation Site

Standing outside the viewer is presented with the emotional aspects of this abandoned building. There is the expectation that it’s desolate, empty, and has been an eventual failure as a structure, socially and constructively. It is now a by-product that is unquestionably uninhabitable and has yet to be worth the cost of demolishing.

Upon entering the stark low-rise, I stepped into a coveted jewel box, a crystal-encrusted flat, something that appealed to my childhood anticipations of discovering hidden spaces. I haven’t seen copper sulphate used as a material since I was in science class trying to grow rock gardens (oh yeah- and Tokujin Yoshioka’s Venus Chair- interesting to look at alongside Hiorns), but nothing remotely challenges the scale which Hiorns presented here. It was psychologically and visually heavy. The manner that it addresses the architecture is that of a secretive moss, or heavy dust covering, but in an apocalyptic, violent sense, almost to the degree that volcanic lava might cover a landscape and leave vague reminders of a historical form. This covering was actually still growing, while the building adversely was in a state of decay.

Detail

Bath coated in Copper Sulphate Crystals

James Lingwood, Co-Director of Artangel, conducted an interview with Roger Hiorns for the text titled The Impregnation of an Object, July 2008:

JL: What led you to the kind of architecture which would host the project? The space we found is quite specific and there is the idea of working in a small part of a larger whole, where the living spaces were replicated, all the same size with all the same configurations.”

RH: I have a deep interest in Brutalist architecture and the best example of that is the Robin Hood Estate designed by Alison and Peter Smithson in Poplar in East London. That was the place I was initially thinking about.

JL: What is it about the Robin Hood Estate?

RH: It was the first of its kind in London and one of the most extreme. These buildings were about containing large groups of people who were all living in the same kinds of places and being encouraged to think the same kinds of thoughts. There was the idea of a collective, the dream of growing together for the greater good, and I suppose I have always been very distrustful of the collective, it’s like my attitude to religion. These kinds of buildings don’t work, as a model they have not passed the test of time.”

“JL: These kinds of buildings began to deteriorate quite quickly. By the 1970’s they were already in bad shape.”

RH: They’re still somehow rather beautiful, they seem to carry the stain of life, to take in everything they were experiencing. I am always interested in this material called experience and what that would be. The grinding of an engine is an experience. The collective nature of the place is a kind of experience, an amalgam of memories.”

Details of Main Space(L) and Entry(R)

Ceiling Detail

Detail

“RH: I am completely objective about my own artwork, I can stand outside of it and work out whether it should exist or not. That’s why I use materials which enable me to be detached, materials which are their own thing, have their own genetic structure. Rather like copper sulphate is as auto-genetic, my work is also auto-genetic, it tries to make some sense of my psychological position and then basically makes itself.

JL: What about the blueness of the crystals-was that something else that attracted you to the material?

RH: The color was always a sidetrack for me, it was never about the beauty, about claiming something to be a beautiful object after it had undergone the crystalizing process. That would just be banal, though banality is not a bad thing always.”

Seizure was commissioned by Artangel and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, in association with Channel 4 and also by the National Lottery through the Arts Council England.

MMM

Manifestos & Modernism
@ MoMA

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: Adolph Loos, architecture, Bauhaus, David Gammon, design, design museum, dieter rams, Ladislav Sutnar, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Manifesto, Massimo Vignelli, Modernism, MOMA, Pio Manzu, product, Rolf Harder

(1) Comment

2 January 2010

I’m in New York briefly before returning to London, and it happens to be the one week where most galleries are closed due to the Christmas/New Years holiday! New Years eve led me to the MoMA, along with the rest of New York. Struggled through the Bauhaus & Tim Burton shows, and by habit checked out the design and architecture galleries which showcase a rotating selection of MoMA’s permanent collection. This never fails to impress. My favorite aspect of this gallery is the central showcase, which is a jewel box of product designs from the past century. Braun always has a substantial line-up of products here, more than not by Mr. Rams. The “Less and More” show at the Design Museum in London creates such a cohesive time line of his work, and here is was nice to see single specimens alongside products from contemporaries. For the millionth time I realize how wonderfully timeless all of these products are, the work being present for precisely that reason. Most of the participants have lived by the staples of modernist principles, building a roster of manifestos which have yielded decades of iconic design. To kick-off the New York posts here is some eye candy from the showcase at the MoMA along with some manifestos (take it or leave it!) to inspire the New Year.

MoMA

Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles of Good Design, Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

Portable Transistor Radio & Phonograph (Model TP1) 1959,Design by Dieter Rams, manufactured by Braun AG, Frankfurt, Germany, Plastic Casing, Aluminium Frame, and leather strap

Rolf Harder, Alcan Foil Pamphlets for Aluminium Company of Canada, lithograph, c.1960-62

Case Detail

David Gammon, Turntable, Polished aluminium, brass, plywood and acrylic, manufactured by Transcriptors Ltd., New York, 1964

Enzo Mari, Timor Perpetual Calendar, plastic,manufactured by Danese S.r.i, Italy, c.1966/ Massimo Vignelli, Max-2 Stacking Cup,plastic, manufactured by Heller Designs Inc. c.1970/ Pio Manzu, Chronotime Clocks, ABS polymer casing and metal parts,manufactured by Italora, Milan, c.1968

Adolph Loos, excerpt, “Ornaments and Crime”, 1908
The change in ornament implies a premature devaluation of labor. The worker’s time, the utilized material is capital that has been wasted. I have made the statement: The form of an object should be bearable for as long as the object lasts physically. I would like to try to explain this: a suit will be changed more frequently than a valuable fur coat. A lady’s evening dress, intended for one night only, will be changed more rapidly than a writing desk. Woe betide the writing desk that has to be changed as frequently as an evening dress, just because the style has become unbearable. Then the money that was spent on the writing desk will have been wasted.

Massimo Vignelli, excerpt ,”The Vignelli Canon”, 2008

Whatever we do, if not understood, fails to communicate and is wasted effort. We design things which we think are semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if, at the point of fruition, no one understands the result, or the meaning of all that effort, the entire work is useless. Sometimes it may need some explanation but it is better when not necessary. Any artifact should stand by itself in all its clarity. Otherwise,something really important has been missed. The final look of anything is the by-product of the clarity (or lack of it) during its design phase. It is important to understand the starting point and all assumptions of any project to fully comprehend the final result and measure its efficiency. Clarity of intent will translate in to clarity of result and that is of paramount importance in Design. Confused, complicated designs reveal an equally confused and complicated mind. We love complexities but hate complications! Having said this, I must add that we like Design to be forceful. We do not like limpy design. We like Design to be intellectually elegant – that means elegance of the mind, not one of manners, elegance that is the opposite of vulgarity. We like Design to be beyond fashionable modes and temporary fads. We like Design to be as timeless as possible. We despise the culture of obsolescence. We feel the moral imperative of designing things that will last for a long time. It is with this set of values that we approach Design everyday, regardless of what it may be: two or three dimensional, large or small, rich or poor. Design is One!

Ladislav Sutnar, Build the Town Blocks, painted wood, c.1940

Ladislav Sutnar, Build the Town Promotional Cards, paper, c.1940

Walter Gropius, “Bauhaus Manifesto”, 1919

The final goal of any plastic activity is the building! To decorate it was once the most noble task of the plastic arts; they belonged intimately to the component parts of the great art of architecture. Today, they delight in an autonomy that may, again, lead to a collaboration among all creative artists.

Architects, painters, and sculptors must relearn to known and understand the complex form of the construction as a whole and in its element: Then their works will be filled again with the architectonic spirit that they lost in the art of the drawing room.

The old art schools could not achieve this unity, and, anyway, how could they have done it–art being unteachable. They must turn again to workshops. The universe of model draftsmen and of those who work in the applied arts, a universe where one limits oneself to drawing and painting, must finally rediscover the universe of building. When the young man who feels the call for plastic creativity first learns a trade, as in the old days, then the unproductive artist will no longer be doomed to unfinished works, for he will have a trade, a capacity to excel in something.

Architects, sculptors, painters, all of us, we must return to manual work! For there is no “professional art.” There is no basic difference between the artist and the artisan. The artist is just an elevated version of the artisan. Thank heaven, during rare moments of light that are beyond his control, art flourishes unconsciously from the work of his hands, but the knowledge of the basics of his work is indispensable to any artist. It is the source of all creative production.

Let us therefore form a new union of artisans, free of the arrogance that led to a separation of classes and built a wall of arrogance between artisans and artists! Let’s have the will to do it, let’s conceive and achieve together the construction of a future that will unite everything: architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single formation, and that one day will rise toward heaven, the shining symbol of a new faith.

Diagram of the Bauhaus Curriculum

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Working theses”, 1923.

We reject all aesthetic speculation, all doctrine,and all formalism. Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms. Living. Changing. New. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only today can be given form. Only this architecture creates. Create form out of the nature of the task with the means of our time. This is our work. O F F I C E. B U I L D I N G. The office building is a house of work of organization of clarity of economy. Bright, wide workrooms, easy to oversee, undivided except as the organism of the undertaking is divided. The maximum effect with the minimum expenditure of means. The materials are concrete iron glass. Reinforced concrete buildings are by nature skeletal buildings. No noodles nor armoured turrets. A construction of girders that carry the weight, and walls that carry no weight. That is to say, buildings consisting of skin and bones.

Stuart Haygarth

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: ceramics, design, Haunch of Venison, New Museum, product, stuart haygarth

http://www.haunchofvenison.com

(1) Comment

25 December 2009

The other week I saw the Stuart Haygarth show titled “Found” at Haunch of Venison. Having only seen one of his chandelier pieces at the re-opening of New Museum in NYC a few years ago, it was great to see his newer furniture projects alongside a collection of his lighting. The furniture is successful by his process, re-purposing meticulously curated collections of found objects, but there is a quality to his lighting that literally and conceptually elevates objects beyond their industrial disposition. The lack of this relationship in the furniture is perhaps because we are already adept to accessing and using objects at these proximities, in these positions. Objects, functional or not, are experienced by being picked up, turned, thrown away, packed, stored, displayed… Adversely, the chandeliers force us to look up through the lenses and eyeglass frames used in the collection, effectively displacing the viewer and the objects an equidistance from their utilitarian relationship, revealing new emotional typologies.

Cabinet Detail

The lens-frame chandeliers, called urchin lights, are so evocative in their possession of historical reference, I felt they were the most successful pieces in the show. Displayed in the only darkened room in the gallery, they loom over the viewer in an unmatched cluster of three, initially ocean-like in their presence. Once under them, they attain more robotic and skeletal qualities. Seeing so many tiny clavicle-like frames is instantly reminiscent of described holocaust remains, personal objects that were indefinitely part of daily life, an enabler, a dis-abler, a by-product. In grouping such an immensity of frames, the objects are considered on levels of dispossession, the sinister suggestion of an object’s ability to persevere beyond the life of its owner. This possibly is an objects greater life, from the time of abandonment to reincarnation.

Urchin Light

Urchin light detail

Lens Chandelier

Lens Chandelier Detail

Conical Lens Chandelier

Detail from center

Other favorites were the table lamps whose bases were adorned with the obsessive cat and dog collections often thrown to the second-hand shop.

Ceramic Figurine Lamps

Cat Detail

Bottle Cap Floor Lamps

The Stuart Haygarth show “Found”, will be up at Haunch of Venison, 6 Burlington Gardens
London W1S 3ET, through 30 January.

http://www.stuarthaygarth.com/

http://www.newmuseum.org/

V&A Project

by Melissa Gamwell

Filed: ceramics, cosmetics, design, France, graphite, Porcelain, product, RCA, Victoria & Albert Museum, wax

http://www.septemberindustry.co.uk/?p=2985

(2) Comments

14 December 2009

For the first term project at the Royal College of Art we were asked to choose an object from the Victoria & Albert Museum’s new ceramic gallery, create a replica and produce an interpretation. Nearly a week after considering hundreds of objects, which are displayed in a stunning strand of spaces on the third floor, I finally landed on a French porcelain cosmetics jar, originating from a factory in Mennecy, outside of Paris in pre-revolutionary 17th century France. My initial attraction was due to its hundreds of seemingly identical flowers coating the surface. Any object oriented between the typologies of industrial production and delicate craftsmanship usually catches my eye, and this piece in particular, despite my feeling that it was too simple of an object ( which I now retract entirely), became my focus for the past 8 weeks.

Cosmetics Jar, Mennecy, France, 1755. Soft paste porcelain with hand-pressed decoration(left) Mennecy II, London, 2009. Slipcast porcelain, casting wax, graphite, plaster(right)

Cosmetics Jar, Mennecy, France, 1755. Soft paste porcelain with hand-pressed decoration. Approx 16 cm x 13cm(left) Mennecy II, London, 2009. Slipcast porcelain, casting wax, graphite, plaster. Approx 28cm x 18cm (right)

Aside from the technical challenges I was particularly interested in the life of such an object and its user. This jar would have been part of a set, living on an impressive vanity where the ritual of beautification would occur. Both the 17th century french royalty and the bourgeois court were heavy subscribers to the cosmetics industry. Ointments and powders were used to make the skin appear more fair and white, which was a visual proclamation of the luxury of service, situated well beyond a sun-cast, agrarian means of living. Despite the privilege, cosmetics at the time used arsenic as an ingredient, which lead to skin disfigurements and fatalities.

I love that an object can possess such a dichotomy, sourcing beauty and disfigurement, and inherently also be a decorative particle of another surface. When developing an interpretation, my focus was derived from the temporal quality of cosmetics as a surface device, and how it might integrate an object abstractly with a person and their environment.

The form itself became an exaggeration of the original Mennecy jar, but now coated in a series of residual materials that will fade and deteriorate on the vase, while making marks on the person and their habitat. Consequently the object will become a record of its use, questionably more unsightly or constantly cleaner, more deteriorated or progressively beautiful with age.

Here is a visual time line of the project showing varying stages of the process.

First attempts at throwing porcelain

The original jar and lid would have first been thrown in a soft-paste porcelain on a wheel, then turned by hand to create the decorative marks and shape. The flowers are hand made and immediately applied. For my attempt I experimented with different templates to accommodate the form of the original, and also created a plaster tool to aid in the production of the flowers.

Base form with and without floral application

Original Mennecy Jar ( left) and replica ( right)

Details of the replica object

One of my earlier reactions to the form and use of decoration was to invert the expectation of flourish by creating the texture/subject/interest on the inside of the vessel. While I was also contemplating the final direction of my interpretation, I made a test study for this concept ( which was also used as a glaze test). I will definitely be developing this concept further for another project called secret fauna@ secretfauna.com

Inverted Mennecy, London, 2009. Hard-paste porcelain. Hand applied flowers and horses.

Inverted Mennecy with hand applied flowers and horses. Hard-paste porcelain. Approx 13cm x 9 cm

Detail

Below are some sketches that were made from the original thrown forms which began to dictate the forms of the final interpretation. These were thrown spontaneously and after living with them in my studio I began to see them as small sketches of how I might go forward.

Thrown sketches

This led to more refined forms turned in plaster for casting.

3 form developments in plaster

Porcelain Casts

Porcelain casts and color sampling

Porcelain casts

When considering materials to coat the surface of the vases, I experimented with colors and textures that I felt had a notion of cosmetics and that historically related to objects and object-making. One of my first thoughts was to use red wax because it reminded me of the body, blood & femininity. It also works as a nod to lipstick & rouges. I was very attracted to the residual quality of wax, in that despite the color, if you are to touch it, you end up repelling other kinds of matter, rather than obtaining a visual mark. Contrary to that I also started testing graphite mixed with binders, which makes it a bit harder and slightly less transferable, reminiscent of an eyeshadow or pencil. Finally I tested plaster with different gradients of tint, to reference a finely pressed powder.

Porcelain sample dipped in wax

Tinted plaster swatches and porcelain samples dipped in plaster

Porcelain samples dipped in varying consistencies of liquid graphite

Final prototypes:

Slip cast porcelain with wax, plaster and graphite coatings

Graphite and plaster transfer

habitats

Detail

Here is an article about the renovations of the new V&A ceramic galleries:

The Anish Kapoor exhibit:

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/anish-kapoor/

Design Museum

David Chipperfield
Form Matters
&
Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams

by Jonathan Lee

Filed: architecture, design, design museum, dieter rams, form, product, vitsoe, white