ART CITIES:Los Angeles -Taurus and the Awakener

With book “Prometheus the Awakener: An Essay on the Archetypal Meaning of the Planet Uranus” (1995) the cultural historian Richard Tarnas presents a groundbreaking synthesis of history, archetypal astrology, and transpersonal psychology. Reading this work one feels graced with expanded horizons, the sudden rediscovery of a conscious universe.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Kordansky Gallery Archive

In his book Richard Tarnas describes how astrologers have come to associate Uranus with: change, rebellion, freedom, liberation, reform, revolution, etc… Suggesting that the planet was misnamed, he instead connects its archetypal terrain to the myth of Prometheus, who disobediently stole fire from the gods in an egalitarian act of technology-sharing. The body of Richard Tarnas’ essay consists of an impressive mosaic of cultural figures with the planet Uranus prominent in their natal charts, men and women known for their rebellion against orthodoxy or tradition, display of scientific or artistic genius, and other Uranian-Promethean qualities. Uranus entered Taurus in May 2018, its symbolism is related to the sensual, the earthy, the grounded, and the fecund, would seem to counteract the excitability and ruthless penchant for innovation that define the Uranian archetype. It is this spirit that the exhibition “Taurus and the Awakener”, that occupies both of the David Kordansky Gallery’s spaces, seeks to channel by juxtaposing sculptures whose intellectual rigor and experimental ethos are inextricable from their physical expression. The exhibition brings together floor- and wall-based objects from a diverse group of contemporary artists, highlighting their pronounced materiality, organic forms, and simultaneous emphasis on craft-based discipline and free-ranging intuition. Materials used to make the works on view include glazed clay, tires, cigarette packs, incense, dyed velvet, bronze, and broken mirror. They are alternately imposing, ephemeral, dimensional, and provocatively flat; some explode with–or explode as–psychedelic bursts of color, while others rely upon subtle and brooding variations of hue to bring out the intensity of their textures. Rich in concepts articulated via non-linguistic modes, the exhibition teems with intricate patterns and esoteric geometries. The monumental presence of Chakaia Booker’s sculptures built from sliced tires, which function as wide-ranging metaphors for a host of social and environmental conditions–labor, race, class, urban development–enter into idiosyncratic dialogue with the assemblage constructions of Paul Pascal Thériault, in which constellations of cigarette packs and other found materials are perched on shelves or pedestals. Both artists bring new life to discarded objects by subjecting them to an abstract sense of order. Betty Woodman’s Aztec Vase and Carpet series, a large-winged ceramic vessel rests on a piece of canvas layered with flat ceramic fragments; all elements have been glazed or painted with bright colors and patterns. Ruby Neri produces boldly images of the female body, glazing the undulating sides of large pots with relief paintings of women in Dionysian revelry. Mindy Shapero’s totemic sculptures, with their psychedelic vortices of rainbow color, retain human warmth even when they depart completely from figuration. Barbara Chase-Riboud’s sculptures, made from ribbon-like lengths of bronze and silk cords, are poetic exercises in polarity. They combine extremes of hardness and softness, rigidity and flexibility, and structure and ornament, and not only suggest that the most powerful innovation might in fact be a radical act of synthesis, but remind us that the physical world in which we live is constantly inventing ways to unify and balance itself. On presentation are works by: Polly Apfelbaum, Huma Bhabha, Chakaia Booker, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Evan Holloway, Ruby Neri, Mindy Shapero, Arlene Shechet, Paul Pascal Thériault, and Betty Woodman.

Info: David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W Edgewood Pl, Los Angeles, Duration: 21/7-25/8/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://davidkordanskygallery.com