ART-PRESENTATION: Melodrama Acts I &II
This Summer, Luxembourg & Dayan collaborates with Francesco Bonami on the sculpture as performance Exhibition “Melodrama”, with “Act I” taking place in the London space, and “Act II” in New York. The exhibition includes sculptures, a series of photographs, and one video that together function as characters in a melodramatic play. Cloaked under commonplace appearances, the works perform dramatic attitudes, generate heightened emotions, and radiate pathos.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery Archive
Following the gallery’s recent exhibitions of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures in London, and an exhibition of César’s works from the ‘60s in New York, “MELODRAMA” is the third exhibition in Luxembourg & Dayan’s sculptural investigations, a project that traces the blurry line that lies between materiality and imagination in the realm of sculpture. Act I: London. Pino Pascali’s sculpture “Coda di Delfino” (1966) seems to have already escaped the Gallery into the wall leaving nothing more than a trace of its tail. Maurizio Cattelan’s “Untitled (taxidermied horse)” (2007) follows Pascali’s dolphin with a leap of its own, into the opposite wall of the gallery. The plot thickens with Fischli & Weiss’s inanimate black rubber “Heart” (1987), which lies still on a pedestal, hidden and over- looked like a character in one of Beckett’s plays. Finally, a series of photographs by Franco Vimercati from his “Ciclo Zuppiera” (1983) , these black and white photographs of a soup terrine transform a domestic object into a tragic and melancholic timeless diva. In Act 2: New York. Vincenzo Gemito’s 19th Century bronze bust sits in unlikely conversation with another cast bronze piece by Jeff Koons. Engaged in silent dialogue, these busts proclaim a lingering drama since departed. Another duet is: Urs Fischer’s “Untitled”, a chair held by disembodied hands, plays counterpoint to Richard Serra’s “Hand Catching Lead”, which chronicles the artist’s repeated attempts to clasp pieces of lead as they plummet past him. In a crossing of two and threedimensional media, the uncanny, suspended stillness of Fischer’s sculpture is cut through by the gravitational momentum of Serra’s film.
Info: Curator: Francesco Bonami, Act I: London: Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, 2 Savile Row, London, Duration: 24/6-20/8/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-17:00, Sat 12:00-16:00, Act II: New York, Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, 64 East 77 Street, New York, Duration:14/7-17/9/16, Days & Hours:Mon-Fri 10:00-17:00, www.luxembourgdayan.com
