Do Not Walk Outside This Area, Roman Ondάk, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (26 April - 18 June 2012)

A chance visit to Deutsche Guggenheim during a work trip to Berlin for DMY International Design Festival resulted in seeing a work of art, so simple yet so completely captivating in both its idea and installation that it has rejuvenated my interest in contemporary conceptual art.  As part of Slovakian artist Roman Ondάk’s exhibition, winner of Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year award, an entire wing of a Boeing airplane rested on the middle gallery floor, acting as a bridge and only form of entrance between two further galleries.

Such an unassuming object, taken out of its usual functioning context, became a true thing of simple beauty and walking across it momentarily transported me to a liminal space not quite in the gallery and yet not quite anywhere else – a complete immersion in a very similar way to that experienced recently in the Kusama installation (see earlier review).

The gallery’s website succinctly introduces Ondάk’s work:

“Travelling, moving through space and time, is a continuous theme in Ondák’s work. This is the case in do not walk outside this area, a project the artist conceived specifically for his Artist of the Year exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim. The path through the installation leads via the original wing of a Boeing 737-500, which enjoins two exhibition rooms like a bridge. In both rooms, works on paper and installations are devoted to the theme of “travel”. One of them is Balancing at the Toe of the Boot, 2010, a series of seven postcards and sixteen fictional newspaper articles based on a trip to Calabria. To reach the second part of the exhibition, the visitor walks over the wing in the area marked: “Do not walk outside this area,” entering the unreachable surface that otherwise can only be seen out of the window of an aircraft cabin.

Ondák not only plays with a reversal of inside and outside, but also with the conventions of the art industry. Everyone knows the prohibitions, barriers, and boundaries that lend artworks a valuable, exclusive aura and thus fetishize them: Please do not touch! Do not come too close. No photographs. But Ondák’s wing is not a hallowed sculpture. It is an object of use that we are supposed to enter and touch. This footbridge serves as a runway for our ideas, memories, and fantasies. In the age of global mobility, Ondák invites us to take an inner, imaginary journey”.

Very cleverly done Roman!

Sarah Lucas: Make Love, Situation, London (16 February-26 May 2012)

I am a great fan of Sarah Lucas and her work.  I love the way she wears her gender politics on her sleeve and unapologetically sticks to a form of artistic expression which has altered little over the last 15 years, yet which still appears fresh, packs a powerful punch and retains its relevance within today’s contemporary art scene, a scene which uncomfortably shuffles its feet when confronted with overtly feminist work.

I read two reviews before visiting Make Love, one by Colin Glen in Art Monthly and the other by Coline Milliard for artinfo.com.  As a fledging art historian and critic, far be it for me to make judgments on other people’s writing styles, but Glen’s constant artist name dropping when describing Lucas’s work and references to complex theoretical discourses may fit the required writing style of the publication, but left me struggling to understand exactly what he thought of her work and I feel completely missed the point of what Lucas is all about.  In contrast, Milliard’s more accessible writing style really reflected Lucas’s no-nonsense attitude.  For me, it is fascinating to compare both reviews and discover and decide which style of writing appeals to me as a reader and in developing my own writing.

So, to the exhibition itself!  The whole premise of handing over Sadie Coles’ new Situation project space located next to the main gallery in Burlington Place to Lucas who will curate a year’s programme of her own work, is testament to the strength of the long standing and personal relationship between the artist and her dealer.  In Make Love, Lucas presents ten new sculptures which all make use of her trademark stuffed tights, metal buckets and concrete blocks.  Titles such as “Pussy”, “Hard Nud” and “Tit Teddy” reflect Lucas’s familiar hard-arse, in-your-face intimacy in her gender-based pieces, while the biomorphic Nuds series offer a more reflective and expanding vocabulary.  Two printed wallpapers, “Priére de Toucher” and “Get Off Your Horse”, both earlier works slightly readjusted and represented twelve and seventeen years (respectively) since they were first created.  Lucas’s reasoning for including these two pieces and references to ancient myth contained in the press release, require further investigation.

Lucas’s work is as much about formal qualities and material understanding as it is about social commentary.  Despite the rough and ready, do-it-yourself attitude of artist run spaces which Situation alludes to with its shabby interior of stripped back walls and bare floor, the work is almost mute within such an austere setting.  The severity of both her work and the interior almost cancel themselves out.  When her sculptures are installed and viewed in venues such as the Freud Museum in 2000 and more recently during her week’s residency at the St John Hotel in Soho as part of last year’s Frieze Art Fair, the juxtaposition between her use of everyday and domestic objects against more formal and dare I say it, decorative interiors, adds a friction between the work and the viewer which forces the viewer to reflect longer on such work.

Despite this, Making Love proves that Lucas has remained a constant and forceful presence in the British art scene since the heady yBa years of the early 1990s.  In a 2006 interview for The Guardian, when asked what words or phrase she overuses the most, Lucas replied “go away, get a knob, come back, we'll talk about it”.  Such is the sentiment of the artist, such is the sentiment contained within her work. 

Yayoi Kusama, Tate Modern, London (9 February-5 June 2012)

If you are lucky enough to be able to position yourself within Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Wall – Filled with the Brilliance of Life installation where you can neither see reflections of yourself or other visitors and then lose yourself in the gently changing coloured lights, you are in for a truly magical experience.   This may seem a little theatrical and the piece itself may also be seen by some as too grandiose in its intention (a multitude of tiny LED spot lights suspended from the ceiling provide the artist with a clever 21^st century twist for her obsession with polka dots) in comparison to much contemporary art.  Nevertheless, it is the first artwork which has completed engaged all my senses and momentarily transported me to a liminal space never experienced before and for that reason, for me it was truly magical.  In fact, the whole exhibition was a wonderful, unexpected gem.  To my embarrassment, I was unaware of Kusama until seeing images of her soft sculpture work featured in some press for this show.  It is such a surprise and pleasure not only to discover a new artist but with a body of work and art historical story which is personally exciting and fascinating and offers potential for further research and discovery.

Yayoi Kusama was born in Japan in 1929 and developed a passion for art making from an early age.  Formally trained, she eventually emigrated to the United States frustrated by the conventional teaching she was receiving and becoming more interested in the European and American avant-garde.  She moved to New York in 1958 and for the next ten years immersed herself in the burgeoning conceptual artistic scene of the time before returning to Japan, where she remains today, aged 84.  There is so much work to love in this exhibition, from her exquisite early works on paper, the tour de force of her Accumulation sculptures and later large sculpture and installations, as well as the wonderful Infinity Mirrored Wall.  The work she produced during her ten years in New York are inarguably on a par with the likes of Schneemann, Spero and other female artists who were carving out careers in a pre-feminist art world, yet her name is curiously missing from feminist writings about the very art scene she was very actively involved in.

Her collage work of the 1970s and the 1980s paintings seem to reflect the mental health crises she experienced at the time and appealed less to me.  They seem to be searching for a previous direction which had been momentarily lost and out of the artist’s grasp.  However, they are still fascinating to view within the context of what was happening in her life during that time.  Her most recent paintings reminded me of the Matisse’s late collage works, what they lack in cutting edge exploration or critical enquiry, they make up for with their air of pathos showing an elderly artist’s need to be creative when their artistic powers are failing them.  Equally fascinating was the archive material on display.  There was a wonderful photograph in a New York tabloid reporting on one of her infamous naked happenings staged in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art.  A very uncomfortable and embarrassed looking security guard is approaching a small group of naked performers who have invaded the pond where Maillol’s The River sculpture is sited.  It is both a comical and thought provoking juxtaposition of accepted female nudity in the form of a modernist sculpture and the unaccepted fleshy reality on display in Kusama’s intervention.

It is though Kusama’s soft sculptures which first drew me to discovering the artist and visiting this exhibition, which speak to me the most.  From the Accumulation series of the 1960s and her clouds and boxes series of the 1980s and 1990s, there is something about the dichotomy of a female artist working with fabric and clothing with all their associated feminist and psychoanalytical readings of aesthetics and touch and in relation to its presentation to an audience where the element of touch is forbidden.

Phew!

I can finally see light at the end of this particular tunnel!  As next week’s deadline looms for submitting two essays  (forms of art historical writing and second debates and approaches  - great timetable scheduling by the university – NOT!) my two attempts are virtually completed.  I need to stop looking at them for a couple of days and then do final proofing and bind, etc.  I am still amazed and slightly shell shocked at just how much time, energy and social life such work takes up. 

I really enjoyed the forms of art historical writing essay.  I created a catalogue introduction for an imagined sculpture exhibition at the Serpentine gallery.  I think I got a little bit carried away with my former curator’s cap on as I actually went and measured the gallery and am submitting an accompanying floor plan and list of proposed works, as well as the text itself!

The second essay, on representations of gender in contemporary art, was more challenging as there may be potential overlap with my dissertation topic and I certainly do not want to peak too soon with that…..

Next week I will return the twenty books I currently have from the university library, clear my desk at home, take a deep breath and then wait for the next module to kick in….

Diary of a Fledging Art Historian (Part 1)

As the first term at university draws to an end, I am already exhausted with the weekly 4 hour return drive down to Reading and juggling full time work with full time university assignments.  I've already had an argument with one tutor and am still adjusting to the huge differences between academic and corporate life.   My art criticism aspirations have also come to a grinding halt as all my spare time is currently devoted to course work.  I have managed to see Josephine Meckseper at Timothy Taylor Gallery, Phyllida Barlow at Hauser & Worth and Edgar Degas at the Royal Academy, but no reviews on the blog, I'm afraid.

Despite all this, I do love being on campus and look forward to getting down there every week. Art History fascinates me, but I keep getting distracted by different subjects and issues, whereas everyone else seems to be focussed on their dissertation subject already.  At the moment I am broadly thinking about early 20th century sculpture by women artists or the use of soft sculpture by 21st century women artists, but have no idea what the Big Dissertation Question will be yet.......

Anyway, this term we have been concentrating on research methods, along with debates and issues which lay the groundwork for future modules and I currently have a 3,000 word essay on art and globalisation to write over the Christmas holiday - Seasons Greetings!!

Wilhelm Sasnal, Sadie Coles, London (9 June – 27 August 2011)

The cool, clinical and emotionless interior of Sadie Coles is a perfect backdrop for fifteen new paintings by Polish artist, Wilhelm Sasnal.  Displayed on its perfectly white-washed walls and devoid of any apparent cohesion or meaning, Sasnal’s work emanates an air of aloofness and general distain for any viewer.  His debt to Luc Tuymans is surely unquestionable with his use of washed out colours, faux-naïve brushstrokes and random, mundane subject matter (stylistic tools seen many times for many years at graduate art shows).

One of the few paintings with a title is first encountered when entering the gallery.  The Sun is a curiously anaemic painting.  It feels like a canvas on which the artist had begun a painting but then discarded.  Propped up against the studio wall and forgotten, sunlight from a window appears to have bleached the painting with some scorch marks of orange under-painting seeping through.

The pure abstraction of The Sun seems out of place with Sasnal’s other paintings here, being mainly figurative and landscape.  Monochrome or pastel interiors hang beside a brooding landscape and stark still lives, although depictions of mother and baby, either as fragmented sculptural pieces or a copy of a photograph (again defaced) hint at a deeper level of engagement with a particular subject matter.

The gallery handout clarifies his interest in themes of motherhood, the sacrificial nature of parenthood and the exploration of Catholic iconography in contemporary Poland in these paintings, which begins to explain their curious mix of dated signifiers.  It is a mistake though to think that all of Sasnal’s paintings in this show can be as easily categorised.  Subject matter and context seem less important to him than the manipulation and mastery of paint itself.  All the paintings are oil on canvas, the most traditional of artistic traditions.  From his sculptural and impasto handling in the ‘motherhood’ pieces, which are truly breathtaking when looking at them up close, to the confident and bravado handing of simple tonal palettes in Pigsty and still lives of a bucket and sponge Untitled, 2011 and bottle of medicine on a laptop Untitled, 2011, Sasnal quietly and confidently, seduces the viewer with his mastery with paint.  The seemingly random graphic pieces and studies of Seurat also included in this exhibition appear to be continuation of the artist’s declaration of his painterly dexterity.

With a forthcoming show at Whitechapel Gallery in October, it will be interesting to see how his work translates to a much larger space as that exhibition will be a survey his work over the past ten years.

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want, Hayward Gallery (18 May-29 August 2011)

I have fallen back in love with Tracey Emin.  It has been a rocky relationship over the years.  Like many people, she first came to my attention in 1999 through the media frenzy surrounding My Bed, which formed part of her work short listed for that year’s Turner Prize and video footage from a Channel 4 television programme she took part in two years before showing her inebriated and barely coherent before stumbling off set.  The image of Emin as the loud-mouthed, out-of-control party girl was born and alongside Damien Hirst, the ‘enfants terribles’ of the Young British Artist phenomenon, unwittingly gained fame and notoriety beyond the confines of the art establishment.

I thought My Bed was inspired - ballsy, daring, disgusting and totally compelling.  I got annoyed when I read it had been the target of protest by two misguided art activists.  I got even more annoyed when Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95 was singled out for criticism and seen by many as an insignificant loss to contemporary art when it was destroyed in a fire at an art storage warehouse in 2004.

My interest in her waned though as I saw much of her subsequent work as too derivative of other artists – the pregnancy/abortion work too Mary Kelly, the blanket series too Louise Bourgeois and the neon signs too Noble and Webster.  While acknowledging and celebrating her post-feminist credentials and lineage, my judgment had been unconsciously clouded by the adverse publicity that surrounded her.   I failed to recognise the very serious and totally committed artist Emin was, and remains today.

Love Is What You Want totally revised my opinion about Emin, as I am sure it has for many other people who like me will be experiencing her work personally for the first time, rather than from reproduced images.  Spanning a career of nearly twenty years and embracing the full range of media available to contemporary artists, even the Brutalist architecture of the Hayward Gallery, which normally dominates and sometimes distracts from the work in its exhibitions, seems to have come out in support of Emin.  It provides the perfect austere and slightly clinical backdrop for her work.

Dark and disturbing family histories set the direction of Emin’s personal and artistic journey.  In a letter from her father, which he wrote to try to stop her excessive drinking and to which Knowing The Enemy was her response, Envar Emin describes his seduction and loss of virginity by the wife of his employer.  At the time she was twenty-four, he was twelve and a half.

In Conversation With My Mum, Emin asks “what is it that you could live through that you thought I could not” after exposing her Mum’s own history of infidelities, children by different men and her constant declaration throughout Emin’s upbringing that she has never wanted her daughter to have children of her own.  “I just prayed that if you ever did get pregnant you told me in time so we could get you an abortion”.  As has well been documented, Emin was raped when she was thirteen.

It is no wonder then that Emin’s ambiguity and ambivalence surrounding sex, pregnancy and abortion inform and continue to permeate throughout her work.  They still pack a powerful punch.  It is a shame though that from her entire output, these works grabbed all the headlines when other works, such as the family memorabilia, almost devotional pieces (May Dodge My Nan, Wimsey and Emin & Emin, for example) are as equally compelling.

Emin also has a wicked sense of humour, which can be seen throughout the exhibition and which she uses to great effect (Emin’s Army, Cat Watching and Running Naked).  Her most recent work shows no sign of diminished rigor and she appears to be working more sculpturally and monumentally.  I am curious to see how her subject matter evolves or changes as she enters her fifties and sixties as it does she does seem fixed on a specific timeframe in her life.

British pop diva Paloma Faith wrote a song called “Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful?”   In the work included in Love Is What You Want, Tracey Emin gives us a bit of each and sometimes both.  Obviously, the rawness of Emin’s work will be not be palatable to everyone, but I believe her artistic legacy will far outlast and outweigh her notoriety and deservedly so.