ART-PRESENTATION: Material Space

A growing number of art galleries are opening seasonal spaces in Aspen, Colorado, in pursuit of U.S. collectors. The move builds on positive experiences with pop-ups in destinations like the Hamptons, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida. The group exhibition “Material Space”, which coincides with Aspen Art Museum’s annual Artcrush, is a collaboration between Lehmann Maupin and Carpenters Workshop Gallery and foreground a group of artists whose practices engage with the influence of minimalism and an exploration of process.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive

Lehmann Maupin Gallery include works from pioneering artist McArthur Binion who alongside his peers, was committed to expanding notions of abstraction in the 1970s and 1980s, a period of artistic exploration and exchange that expanded the then-dominant understanding of artmaking and impacted the discourse of abstraction to this day. Binion’s work will be placed in dialogue with historical and recent works of artists who have similarly honed their material and continued to expand the minimalist tradition. McArthur Binion combines collage, drawing, and painting to create autobiographical abstractions of painted minimalist patterns over an “under surface” of personal documents and photographs. From photocopies of his birth certificate and pages from his address book to pictures from his childhood and found photographs of lynchings, the poignant and charged images that constitute the tiled base of his work are concealed and abstracted by grids of oil stick. The complexly layered works, from a distance, appear to be monochromatic minimalist abstractions that have led many to compare his work to that of Jasper Johns, Robert Ryman, or Brice Marden. However, while his contemporaries focused more on materiality, abstraction, and in some cases the social and political climate of the time, Binion’s works are intensely personal and deeply dedicated to the rigorous process of making a painting. Upon closer inspection, these monochromatic abstractions come into focus: the perfect grid becomes a series of imperfect laboriously hand-drawn lines, behind which emerge intimate details of Binion’s identity and personal history. Mary Corse has built a practice that occupies an independent space at the intersection of minimalist painting, Abstract Expressionism and scientific inquiry. First gaining recognition in the mid-1960s as one of the few women associated with the Light and Space movement that originated in Southern California, Corse is widely recognised for her innovative painting technique using materials which both capture and refract light. Corse’s paintings obsessively engage with perception and embody rather than merely represent light, experimenting with the concept of subjective experience in new and innovative ways. Corse combines a philosophical quest for the portrayal of the infinite with a highly skilled methodical and scientific rigour. Liza Lou first gained attention in 1996 when her room-sized sculpture Kitchen was shown at the New Museum in New York. Representing five years of individual labor, this groundbreaking work subverted prevalent standards of art by introducing glass beads as a fine art material. Through its slow, hand-made process, Kitchen became a monument to women whose labor has historically gone unrecognized. The project blurred the rigid boundary between fine art and craft, and established Lou’s long-standing exploration of materiality, beauty, and the valorization of labor. Working within a craft métier has led the artist to work in a variety of socially engaged settings, from community groups in Los Angeles, to a collective she founded in Durban, South Africa in 2005, to a women’s prison in Belém, Brazil, and a bead embroidery collective in Mumbai, India. Over the past 15 years, Lou has focused on a poetic approach to abstraction as a way to highlight the process underlying her work. In addition to using the variations of color caused by the natural oils of the human hand as a form of tonal mark-making, the artist applies layers of paint, scraping and wiping it across bead-woven cloths, which she then carves into with a hammer in order to reveal the delicate network of thread hidden inside the beads.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery feature several artists who aim to move beyond functionality in their art practices to investigate the intersection of art and design. One can see this with Rick Owens, who will be showing his signature monochromatic pieces that feature a contrasting palette of black and white. Owens’ minimalist vision comes through in his monumental works created in a singular aesthetic, using subtle and rare materials such as Carrara marble and alabaster transformed into stark, geometric forms. His pieces are more sculptural than functional, placing materiality at the forefront. From early on in his career Aldo Bakker  has produced works in which his exquisite use of shape, material and colour is balanced with an almost disturbing tenacity in the way these pitchers, bowls, spoons, stools and tables defy everyday perceptions about the relationship between man and object. Or more precisely: the relationship between object and man. Because despite their tranquil appearance and the modesty of their monochrome skins, Bakker’s objects are anything but submissive. They determine the rules of the interaction. Those who handle or merely observe them should come to terms with the inherent independence of these creatures. Their sensuous presence makes them highly seductive, but also hard to get. A bowl, a bench, a flask: all these ‘objects fatales’ could be (mis)taken for just being dead gorgeous and desirable, where in fact they undermine fixed notions about the object as a commodity. Nacho Carbonell is known for his tactile approach to sculpture which plays with textures, experimental techniques, and natural materials. Born in Spain in 1980 and now based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Carbonell works alongside his team of designers and artists in an open warehouse. He graduated in 2003 from Cardenal Herrera University in Spain and went on to study at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Upon graduating, he created collections such as Evolution in 2009, which won him a nomination for Beazley Design of the Year from the Design Museum in London. In 2010, a year after being named a Designer of the Future at Design Miami/Basel, he presented This Identity, redefining his current style of organic forms and rough and colorful textures. His pieces are part of private collections and museums around the world. Often credited as the founding father of the American crafts movement, Wendell Castle has redefined sculpture and design by seamlessly merging the two into one discipline. He creates unique pieces that blur the distinction between design and sculpture. Castle’s organic and whimsical approach to sculpture incorporates his own invented technique of carving into stacked laminated wood known as lamination. His furniture designs for residential clients, public spaces, and a number of churches represent a unique exploration of the qualities and possibilities of wood and fiberglass. Paul Cocksedge is an internationally acclaimed British designer, who has spent nearly two decades building a reputation for innovative design infused with the sense of simplicity, joy and wonder that has come to characterise his work. Together with Joana Pinho, he co-founded Paul Cocksedge Studio in London in 2004. With a strong and dedicated team of collaborators, the Studio has won national and international acclaim for its original and innovative design, underpinned by research into the limits of technology, materials and manufacturing processes. The key feature of the Studio’s work, in everything from product design to architectural projects, is a focus on simplicity and imagination in order to create unique people-centred designs. At the core of this focus lies an unrelenting attention to detail, a willingness to question previous assumptions about design, and an eagerness to take on a wide-ranging array of projects.

Featured artists and designers: Ron Arad, Aldo Bakker, McArthur Binion, Nacho Carbonell, Wendell Castle, Paul Cocksedge, Mary Corse, Vincenzo de Cotiis, Ingrid Donat, Johanna Grawunder, Roger Herman, Shirazeh Houshiary, Karl Lagerfeld, Liza Lou, David Nicolas, Rick Owens, Robert Stadler, and Charles Trevelyan.

Photo: Liza Lou, Nightsong, 2019, Oil paint on woven glass beads and thread on canvas, 28 × 28 × 1 3/5 in / 71 × 71 × 4 cm, © Liza Lou, Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery

Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 601 East Hyman Ave, 2nd Floor, Aspen, CO, USA, Duration: 5/8-10/9/2021, Days  Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com