CRAFTING WASTE | BY CATHERINE WAGLEY

Chris Doyle, "Smokescreen," 2010, Duratrans on LED light box. Courtesy Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles.

The same E.B. White responsible for Charlotte’s Web—still, to my mind, one of the most stabbing child-geared depictions of the circle of life—was also the obsessive stylist behind Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, that little book that told America, “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words” (and still receives hate mail). But long before he did either of these things he wrote essays—swaths of them, and most of them crafted, endearingly, almost to a fault. He would later refer to one particular essay, written in 1939 and called “Here is New York,” as a “period piece.” But today it feels weirdly prescient. Especially when, after meandering through idol worship (White was staying just blocks from where Earnest Hemingway punched Max Eastman in the nose), neighborhood boundary lines, and the “cold guilt” of the Bowery, White winds down with this: the subtlest change New York has undergone of late, “one people don’t speak much about,” is that the “city, for the first time in its long history is destructible.”

A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges. . . . The intimation of death is part of New York now: in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

White’s fixation on jets overhead had to do with World War II era paranoia; the twin towers hadn’t even been built.

But his foresight, however uncanny, isn’t what makes White’s essay compelling; it’s his reliability as a craftsman. I trust White to understand destruction because he understands the preciousness of construction so well, building up sentences word by word, and paragraphs sentence by sentence.

Chris Doyle, "History of the 20th Century I," 2009, Duratrans on LED light-box. Courtesy Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles.

Artist Chris Doyle understands construction too, as his current exhibition at Sam Lee Gallery in Chinatown shows. The landscape Doyle depicts, often industrial but never really urban, is far less specific than the cityscape White wrote about. It’s a series of built-up vignettes, shown in lightboxes, small prints loosely based on the dimensions of dollar bills, and, most prominently, a 6 minute, 26 second video animation. Called Waste_Generation (also the name of the show) and informed by the romantic ruins of Hudson River Painter Thomas Cole’s Desolation, the video cycles through images of nature and the trappings of manufacturing as they collide and merge with each other. These 6 minutes took a year to compose, and all images were hand-drawn on a computer tablet and then animated using flash. I imagine it’s quiet soundtrack, composed by collaborator Joe Arcidiacono, took a comparably long time. As a result, each moment has an immense intentionality to it, and the video’s careful craftsmanship seems, potentially, like an antidote to the man-made devastation it depicts.

Chris Doyle, "Green/Green," 2010, Duratrans on LED light box. Courtesy Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles.

The press release specifies that Brooklyn-based Doyle’s reinterpretation of Cole is, in part, an attempt to react to 9/11. It’s hard to forget a fact like that, though it’s just as hard to know what that means, and knowing probably isn’t that important. That the currency, buildings, and waste heaps that cycle through are treated as tenderly as the foliage and blooms is what’s important.

E.B. White ends his essay on New York with a tribute to a tree, a willow, “long-suffering and much-climbed.” Says White, “whenever I look at it nowadays and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: ‘This must be saved.’” Of course, it’s the effort White puts into constructing a description of this tree, a “marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death,” that preserves it, or makes preservation in general seem like a worthy cause. The weird, embodied foliage that grows and wilts in Doyle’s animation has a similar effect: by taking the time to create, carefully, these images, Doyle suggests an understanding of destruction goes hand-in-hand with an understanding of what it takes to craft destructible things.

©http://dailyserving.com/2011/03/

YNGVE HOLEN | BERGGREN GALLERY

Yngve Holen

Work from Parasagittal Brain

“Each chop a slice, a split, a cut, a crack, a selected point – a defining crop. Each chop is definite but is advanced by persistent hesitation and postponement, which has lead to a series of works that circle around a sense of ‘hit and miss’ – hit and miss in that there is a strong consciousness of the actual moment of the chop being the crucial, unrectifiable moment – the point of no return.

For his first exhibition at Johan Berggren Gallery, Yngve Holen shows a selection of electric water kettles, a ceramic sink and breakfast imagery. The kettles, halved or cut up by water using a waterjet cutter, are displayed on shelves and a table. Likewise, a sink has been divided into two parts. Incapable of fulfilling its original role as water basin, it takes on the identity of two large fruit-bowls. On the walls are canvas stretchers stretched with transparent PVC – the PVC is printed with images of the artists’ recent breakfasts. As cut off moments the imagery is divided between untouched freshly served breakfasts, and breakfast leftovers.

What guides these actions is an interest in the imagination of both the physical and metaphorical conception of the left and right brain half, and the ascribing of certain qualities to each brain half. In anatomy the vertical separating of left from right sections of the body – a separating into halves – is defined by what is called the sagittal plane. ‘Parasagittal’ is any plane parallel to the midline – an actually unnecessary term, as all parallels to the separating midline are actually defined as sagittal. Parallel to the midline, but its distance to the midline undefined, the parasagittal becomes the symbol for hesitation – the identified but not defined.” –Johan Berggren Gallery

RICHARD LONG | WORKS + INTERVIEW

Richard Long Gold Rush, 2006 granite 252 x 312 inches 640.1 x 792.5 cm 

Richard Long From Water to Water, 2006 white mud, black paint and vinyl text on wall 130 x 469 inches 330.2 x 1191.3 cm 

Richard Long Onion Valley Stones, 2005 chromogenic print, unique 42 x 54 inches 106.7 x 137.2 cm 

Richard Long From Enclosure to Circle, 2005 chromogenic print, unique 42 x 54 inches 106.7 x 137.2 cm 

Richard Long Clover Lake Camp Stones, 2005 chromogenic print, unique 42 x 54 inches 106.7 x 137.2 cm 

Richard Long Pacific Crest Trail Stones, 2005 chromogenic print, unique 42 x 54 inches 106.7 x 137.2 cm 

Richard Long Donner Pass Circle, 2005 chromogenic print, unique 54 x 42 inches 137.2 x 106.7 cm 

  

Richard Long 13th Street Ellipse, 2004 red and green/blue slate 198 x 80 inches 5m x 2 m 

  

Richard Long Chelsea Cairn, 2002 Texas sandstone 8 feet diameter 2.4 m 

Richard Long Petrified Cottonwood Circle, 2000 petrified cottonwood 50 inches diameter 1.3 m 

Richard Long Walking to a Solar Eclipse, 1999 wall text 79 x 220 inches 2 m x 5.6 m 

Richard Long Mountainside Ellipse, 1999 stone 6 1/4 x 149 1/4 x 59 7/8 inches 16 x 379 x 152 cm 

Richard Long The Space of Time, 1999 framed text 41 1/2 x 62 inches 105.4 x 157.5 cm.frame

Richard Long Chubut Circle, 1997 slate from North Wales 14 feet diameter 4.2 m diameter 

Richard Long Houston Circle, 1996 Texas sandstone 13 feet diameter 4 m 

Richard Long Ring of Flint, 1996 English flint from Norfolk 20 feet diameter 6 m 

Richard Long Red Mud Circle, 1994 terracotta clay and black acrylic paint on wall 148 inches diameter 3.7 m 

Richard Long White Water Circle, 1991 mud and black paint on wall 159 x 174 inches 4 x 4.4 m 

Richard Long Quantock Wood Circle, 1981 285 pieces of wood 16 feet diameter 

Richard Long Green Slate Spiral, 1980 63 pieces of green slate 10 feet diamter 3m 

Richard Long County Cork, Ireland, 1967 black and white photograph 30 5/8 x 40 7/8 inches 77.8 x 103.8 cm 

Selected Interview:

The AI Interview: Richard Long 
Artinfo.com, 5 July 2006 
5 July 2006, by Robert Ayres

Richard, let me begin by asking you about your current show. One of the works is a photo and text piece titled This global warming seems to be doing us some good—A Dry Seven Day Coast to Coast Walk across Ireland, Winter 2006. That title rather surprised me. It almost sounds like a joke.

It’s just something slightly ironic that somebody said to me while I was on the walk, as a comment on the nice weather. The other panel of that piece says The land here is very bad, which was also a comment made to me by a farmer that I happened to be passing. It’s a very common expression that the locals use, because on the one hand, it’s idyllically beautiful there, it’s stunning scenery, but from the point of view of a farmer, his cattle haven’t anything to eat.

The reason I asked you about This global warming seems to be doing us some good was because I’ve never really thought of your work as having a sense of humor.

It’s not the primary purpose of my work, obviously. But if you pay attention over the years, a little wit creeps in, as do references to music. It just depends how well you know the work. There are subtle nuances in many of the text works.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about was how your work has been understood so differently over the years. When you first appeared on the scene in the late ’60s, you were seen as an irreverent revolutionary who seemed to want to turn sculpture on its head …

Yes.

… whereas now you’re seen very much as part of longstanding romantic landscape tradition.

Well, I might quibble about the use of the word “romantic,” but certainly a landscape tradition, absolutely, yes. But perceptions are bound to change over the course of 30 or 40 years, aren’t they? One can’t have the same position in the art world. I have a different view of my own work now than I did when I was a young artist. There’s more of it, for a start, and the cumulative effect of it also changes the perception.

Of course, a young man whom no one knows walking a line over a meadow [A line made by walking, England, 1967] is perceived very differently to an artist with a huge body of work behind him.

Sure, yes. And I would argue that the fact that I’ve continued to walk straight lines in many different geographical locations in all parts of the world, for different reasons, and for different lengths of time, enriches and changes the resonance of that very first line. If I’d just left it at that effort, and never walked a line again in my life, the significance of A line made by walking would be quite different now.

During the late ’60s and early ’70s, you were imagined to be part of a land-art movement. 

That’s another thing that’s changed. It was only because I was in a few shows with the American land artists. You could equally see my work in relationship to arte povera, for example. Obviously I am of my time, and I would say that my work is a synthesis of certain aspects of conceptual art, minimal art and maybe arte povera.

Unlike some of your contemporaries, your work from that period doesn’t look like a relic from a distant time. And I think that’s because you haven’t made all sorts of different art since then—unlike someone such as Dennis Oppenheim, for example, who was imagined to be part of the same movement.

Yes, he’s been all over the place, hasn’t he? All I would say is that consistency and following a line of thought counts for something.

Consistency—like your use of the circle motif, which you’ve clearly found very sustaining throughout your career.

Exactly. It’s a powerful, strong idea that, as you say, has lasted throughout my career in different ways. In a way, time tests ideas, and if it’s a weak idea, it doesn’t pass the test of time, but if it’s a strong idea, then it does. That’s partly what all art’s about, isn’t it?

Finally, Richard, can you describe how you go about making work these days? I presume you’re approached all the time with commissions.

Yes. I resist many of them, because that’s not my preferred way of working. The works that I love to do most of all are just the walks in wilderness areas and making sculptures in the landscape in remote places. But my work has so many parallel threads: You mentioned circles, but you could talk about water, you could talk about stones, you could talk about time, you could talk about the big mud works that I make directly on the wall in galleries and museums, you could talk about my fingerprint drawings, you could talk about my mud works where I dip the paper in muddy water … there are many parallel but interrelated themes in my work.

So your preferred way to begin working is to identify a place?

A landscape. At the heart of my work is the fact that I make it myself. I have the pleasure of walking and being in these places and making these works in the landscape. It’s also a question of realizing particular ideas, too. So let’s say I have a certain idea about the symmetry of time and places, I can actually carry it out personally by walking that idea. In other words, there’s no point in getting somebody else to do it. The point of my work is my own physical engagement with the world in different ways, whether it’s walking, or making fingerprints, or throwing stones, or whatever.

(end)

Interview Source:

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/18221/richard-long/?page=1

Image Source:

http://www.speronewestwater.com/cgi-bin/iowa/artists/record.html?record=11

THANKS TO - https://farticulate.wordpress.com/ 

ANDREAS SCHULZE | SPRUETH MAGERS

Artist: Andreas Schulze

Venue: Sprueth Magers, Berlin

Date: January 15 – March 23, 2011

Images courtesy of Sprueth Magers, Berlin

Press Release:

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are delighted to present an extensive solo exhibition by Andreas Schulze in Berlin, featuring new paintings and a selection of works from recent years.

Ever since the 1980s, Andreas Schulze has focused on various interior views of our society. Most often, his works depict everyday landscapes and bourgeois idylls which he constructs as subtle, parallel worlds to reality. His early paintings consist of intensely colored compositions in which the dimensions of sculptural globes and other geometrical forms are shifted and inner pictorial perspectives constantly change. Schulze situates motifs which relate to the formal language of Conceptual Art and Minimal Art in illusionistic spaces which above all seek sensory experience, humor and immediate contact with the viewer. In his later works, Schulze paints suburbs, single-family dwellings or living rooms which are carefully provided with furniture, lamps, rugs and porcelain. Furthermore, he designs large-format spatial installations which extend the themes of his pictures into the exhibition space by means of found objects and his own sculptures. His works establish complex relationships between worldly objects and ornamental décors which make reference to both bohemian lifestyles and bourgeois normality. Simple, often unnoticed objects approach each other in enigmatic freedom: they become the protagonists of a concealed narrative and are assigned a performance filled with significance. The artist gives thematic treatment to the power of illusion within painting which he always ironically disrupts in the pictures. In his works, the things do not hide the fact that they are imitations, and as signs they refer back to themselves in precise self-awareness. Schulze’s deserted, melancholic landscapes and interiors convey both coziness and menace. They manifest the social yearning for secureness and comfort as well as an estrangement of the ‘private’ in which the bourgeois need for harmony turns out to be narrowly restrictive.

In Berlin, Andreas Schulze is presenting his works in a specific setting within the exhibition space, which thereby becomes a component of the suggestive pictorial spaces. The arrangement interweaves real and fictional space, and develops a productive interplay between painting and installation. In the small exhibition space, Ohne Titel (Vorhang), 1991, and Ohne Titel (Dreckecke), 1985, are presented. The curtain made of felt, artificial leather, and curtain cloth shows the reduced facade of a single-family house. As a room divider, it alludes to a practical use in an everyday living space and thereby comprises a sculptural image which, in a humorous manner, summons up various aspects of visibility and voyeurism in the exhibition space. Positioned in front of these works, in a wall niche, is the work Dreckecke which consists of three hand-woven rugs. Despite the reference to Fettecke, 1982, by Joseph Beuys (who was a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf at that time, where Andreas Schulze also studied), the object may be more immediately read in the less theoretical context of the popular German saying ‘In four corners all around, love should abound’: Dreckecke evokes comfortableness and a place of quiet retreat. With the indication of an uncertain opening in the space, however, it becomes a passive-aggressive formation in which the viewer, as in all works of the artist, can never be sure of his own position – whether he is situated inside or outside a space, still out in reality or already within a dream.

Thereby, the display of the series of new paintings on the window side of the large hall in the gallery activates the imaginative power of the viewer: they consist of the serial motif of windows whose painted edges replace an actual picture frame. The installation of the windows offers a view onto the facade of a high-rise building. The trompe l’oeils do not define which perspective the viewer occupies. They remain empty projection screens and show the artist’s unpretentious treatment of a motif which played an important role in the history of painting from Romanticism to Surrealism.

On the opposite wall Schulze presents the painting Ohne Titel (Morris Nolde/Rügen), 2009, which combines various styles of painting and familiar landscapes from art history such as Kreidefelsen auf Rügen by C. D. Friedrich with Morris Louis’ Unfurleds. The painting demonstrates Schulze’s working mode, in which he makes reference to different styles and set-pieces and transforms them into his own pictorial language, where visual experience has precedence over clear contents. Besides, Ohne Titel (5 Sorten Wasser), 2011, depicts various aggregate phases and appearances of water. As abstract signs they are assembled into an ornamental surface that subtly oscillates between two- and three-dimensionality.

Furthermore, the painting Ohne Titel (Wie spät ist es) I, 2010, is part of the exhibition. The work’s structure relates to the face of a watch, whose dials and minute-lines turn out to be an energetically charged construction. In a Dadaist manner, the elements become a composition imbued with a free rhythm.

The exhibition also features three diptychs, entitled Ohne Titel (Autos mit Lichtern), 2010. In these works, bright circles and forms shine like the head- or rear-lights of cars out of darkness into the interior space. The white border stripes of the pictures surrounding the lights are made from wall plaster and thereby refer back to the texture of the real exhibition wall: here as well, the concrete exhibition space is transformed into a stage upon which the works of Andreas Schulze become scenes of an open narrative structure.

Andreas Schulze was born in Hannover in 1955. He studied at the Gesamthochschule Kassel and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he has been a professor for painting since 2008. In 1983 Monika Sprüth opened her gallery with a solo exhibition by Andreas Schulze. During the 1980s, he worked in Cologne in the circle of the Mülheimer Freiheit and the Junge Wilden, but quite early on he distanced himself from an expressive, spontaneous style and a focus on the artist as subject. Last year his works could be seen, among other places, in the large survey exhibition INTERIEUR. Werkschau Andreas Schulze at the Sammlung Falckenberg in Hamburg, as well as at the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren. On the occasion of these two exhibitions, an extensive catalogue was published in September 2010.