ART NEWS: April 03
Bruce Nauman’s exhibition “Presence / Absence” features two single-channel works, from 1999 and 2001, along with three dual-screen projections made in 2013, that foreground the artist’s experimental approach, both in front of and behind the camera. Shot at his ranch in New Mexico, in his studio or the surrounding landscape, they are explorations of mind and matter. Employing elements of performance, labour, language, illusion and duration, the works investigate cognitive and social spheres.“Setting a Good Corner (Allegory & Metaphor)” (1999), filmed on his ranch in Galisteo with a stationary camera, shows the artist building a wooden corner on which to stretch a fence and hang a gate. By contrast, “Sound for Mapping the Studio Model (The Video)” (2001) was filmed inside Nauman’s studio, created from footage originally used for the artist’s celebrated “Mapping the Studio (Fat Chance John Cage)” (2001). In the two corner projections, “Thumb Start” and “4th Finger Start” (both 2013), Nauman revisits the parallax effect which he explored in a number of room-scale corridor works in the early 1970s. Info: White Cube, 50 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 10/3-8/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11;00-19:00, https://whitecube.com
A major exhibition of works by Park Seo-Bo is on show in White Cube. The two earliest works in the exhibition date from 1968, immediately preceeding Park’s best-known “Ecriture” series. Around this time Park was experimenting with new forms, drawing inspiration from both Pop Art and Op Art. They feature an illusionistic sense of space, layering shapes and stripes in bright red, dark blue, green and yellow, mixed with white, and pairing straight with curvilinear lines or hard-edged with rounded forms. In the late-1960s Park embarked on the series for which he is best known, and which has remained his focus for the past sixty years. These works are known by the term “Ecriture”, borrowed from the French word for writing, though Park uses the Korean “Myobop”, derived from the Chinese characters ‘to draw’ and ‘a method’. In the “Colour Ecriture” works, which date from 2000s onwards, Park began using vivid colours, marking a sharp transition from the neutral tones of earlier paintings. This shift was inspired by nature, prompted, in particular, by a visit to Japan in 2000 where he experienced the exuberant autumn colours around Mount Bandai near Fukushima. Info: White Cube, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street , London, Duration: 17/3-1/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-16:00, https://whitecube.com
Pia Camil’s solo exhibition “Three Works” features new iterations of existing works and a site-specific commission. The three major artworks that make up the show investigate relationships of power, intimacy, and collectivity during the pandemic, within the space of an art museum and in the broader bi-national landscape. “Bara, Bara, Bara”, a large-scale, site-specific textile installation first presented in 2017, is composed of secondhand T-shirts produced in Latin America for retailers in the United States that returned to bargain markets in Mexico, either through charity or waste. The shirts are sewn together into five sweeping tarps, each a different field of color. “Autonomous Space Rug” a massive new work which covers the floor below “Bara, Bara, Bara”, with a patchwork of overstock carpet. Blanketing concrete, the piece creates an inviting space to sit, gather, and gaze up at the colorful T-shirt tarps. Overlaid onto the rug is a large, hand-painted diagram designed by the artist. “AIR OUT YOUR DIRTY LAUNDRY” is a new iteration of a flag sculpture originally developed by Camil in 2020, it will be made by Tucsonans in the first few weeks of the exhibition’s life through an exchange: Participants are invited to bring in loved but outworn pieces of clothing or bedding and the story of their significance, and in return receive a $10 giftcard to Bookmans Entertainment Exchange (Arizona’s largest used bookstore) to continue the cycle of reuse. Info: MOCA Tucson, 265 South Church Avenue, Tucson, Duration: 10/4-19/9/2021, Days & Hours: Fri-Sat 12:00-19:00, Sun 12:00-16:00, https://moca-tucson.org
Ugo Rondinone presents his solo exhibition “a sky . a sea . distant mountains . horses . spring.”, at two spaces of Sadie Coles HQ in London,, in which the artist, continuously inspired by the natural world, animates profane subjects like horses, the sea, and the sky to become vessels of spiritual contemplation. Marking the end of lockdown, the exhibition – which spans both London galleries – articulates themes of time, nature, renewal and the psyche, both in its individual parts and as an eclectic whole. At Kingly Street, Rondinone presents fifteen new sculptures of horses cast from blue glass. Slightly smaller than life size, each sculpture is formed from two distinct shades of transparent blue – bisected horizontally to suggest a horizon line running through the silhouette of the animal. At Davies Street, Rondinone is showing four multipart paintings that reinvent his long-running “Mountain” sculptures in two dimensions. Each painting collapses the formula of stacked, painted rocks into three shaped canvases – arranged vertically and painted in single brilliant hues. Info: Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly Street, London & Sadie Coles HQ, 1 Davies Street, London, Duration: 12/4-14/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, https://website-sadiecoles.artlogic.net
Robert Rauschenberg’s series “Night Shades” and “Phantoms” from 1991 are on show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, these are two series of metal paintings composed of silk-screened photographic images and gestural strokes on aluminium supports. Made during his decade-long experimentations with metal, these paintings are characterised by their grayscale palette, which ranges from the “Night Shades” painterly chiaroscuro to the “Phantoms” mirrored surfaces and ethereal translucency. Rauschenberg creates dream-like imagery which appears and disappears as a result of light, shadows and reflections across the artworks’ surfaces. For the “Night Shades”, Rauschenberg silkscreened images onto mirrored or brushed aluminium, applying a tarnish called Aluma Black with gestural strokes. At times the images are obscured by the tarnish, leaving expressive spills of black; at others, Rauschenberg mixed varnish with pigments which resist the tarnish and further enhance the works’ painterly qualities. For the “Phantoms”, Rauschenberg experimented with a different type of metal – mirrored, anodised aluminum – which repelled the tarnish, producing spectral images that appear or disappear according to one’s viewpoint. Info: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 37 Dover St, London W1S, Duration: 13/4-31/7/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.ropac.net
Working across (and often merging) media, including drawing, performance, street art, photography, and animation, Robin Rhode is best-known for his serial photographs of his large-scale public wall drawings, in which figures interact with objects, vehicles, architecture, or abstract geometric shapes and patternsRhode often draws from science, mathematics, history, artmaking, mythology, and politics to gain a deeper understanding of human beings and how they engage with the world that surrounds them. “The Backyard is My World”, the artist’s first solo exhibition in London since 2011, features photographs and animations produced over the last 10 years in a single location―the backyard of the artist’s family home in Johannesburg, South Africa. In this exhibition, Rhode transforms the concrete surface of his backyard, turning it into a body of water, a mathematically inspired imaginary landscape, or a schoolyard playground. The yard functions as an outdoor studio of sorts, the concrete walls and ground offering a monochrome backdrop that transforms the flat visual plane into a three-dimensional space the artist activates using performers, found objects, and site-specific drawings. Info: Lehmann Maupin, 1 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, London, Duration: 14/4-6/6/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 10;00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com