Jenny Holzer at RAM What a miserable week it was last week; between the never ending rain and the sludge we call air, it was hard to leave the house. But I couldn't go to Hong Kong without doing some final catch up, this time on the Bund. The Rockbund Art Museum has really been stepping it up ever since Larys Frogier took over as director a couple of years ago. Their show, "From Gesture to Language", seemed tailor made for me. Works on paper as far as the eye can see! The show explores the connections between the visual and textual constructions in contemporary art. There is a mixture of prints from the Chalcography Department at the Louvre and original works commissioned for the show and sourced from other collections. Of the artists selected, Jenny Holzer and Xu Bing are the most logical choices, as both artists are known for text based installations and their play on language. This was my first time seeing Holzer's 2008 piece Purple, an installation of curved LED light tubes that display text from classified military data. The text, political in nature with parts redacted with XXX, is provided in its entirety on laminated sheets but the content didn't so much interest me as the experience of trying to read the display. The flashing neon lights and moving text sucked me into a swirling vortex, with the pulsating tubes creating a dizzying effect which quickly manifested into a pounding headache for me. I recommend everyone to watch the piece for as long as they can stand it. It's mesmerizing and disconcerting at the same time.
Xu Bing at RAM Most people know Xu Bing for his invented written language that plays on Chinese calligraphic traditions. His large scale scroll installation Book from the Sky consists of endless reams of scrolls that appear to tell a story but upon closer inspection, these scrolls are populated by entirely fictional "Chinese" characters. He was introduced to an American audience with Art for the People, a series of posters he made for the MoMA in New York City that appeared to be written with Chinese characters but were actually the English alphabet written to look like Chinese characters. In 2006, he elaborated on these posters with a carpet that is designed with this motif, and is included in this show. If I had the patience, I would try and decipher the story that makes up this carpet design but the carpet is far too big to examine every "word" closely.
One of my other favorites from the show include Bruce Nuaman's Good Boy Bad Boy (1985), which easily could have been inspirations for some of Zhang Peili's early works. As with most Nauman works, this piece makes you laugh out loud while creating an intense sense of unease. You'll have to see the video for yourself to experience the sheer insanity.
One of my other favorites from the show include Bruce Nuaman's Good Boy Bad Boy (1985), which easily could have been inspirations for some of Zhang Peili's early works. As with most Nauman works, this piece makes you laugh out loud while creating an intense sense of unease. You'll have to see the video for yourself to experience the sheer insanity.
An etching from the Louvre What of the works on paper? Well, there are so many that I couldn't possibly bore you with descriptions of all of them. There are lovely prints by Kiki Smith, Terry Winters and Zhao Xuebing. But I was most intrigued by the print, Le Combat de Yesil-kol-nor, a detail of which is pictured above. It is part of a series of engravings that were exchanged between China and France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The lines of the etching are incredibly precise and fine. When I made prints in my student days, I always tried to create as much detail as possible but never really succeeded. This print almost makes me want to go back to school and try my hand at etching again.
After RAM, I headed to Bund 18, where Xu Zhen/ MadeIn Company had an exhibition in the lobby. The show consists of what he calls "action" paintings (some of which I had seen in his studio a couple years back); canvases were punctured with spray paint nozzles, out of which swaths of black paint were presumably "sprayed" on. My description is a little muddled but it's difficult to explain without showing an image. Unfortunately, the way the pieces were hung made it impossible to take clear photos. I was not a big fan of the show either way. The paintings looked like temporary walls surrounding the lobby café. I'm not sure what he was going for here.
After RAM, I headed to Bund 18, where Xu Zhen/ MadeIn Company had an exhibition in the lobby. The show consists of what he calls "action" paintings (some of which I had seen in his studio a couple years back); canvases were punctured with spray paint nozzles, out of which swaths of black paint were presumably "sprayed" on. My description is a little muddled but it's difficult to explain without showing an image. Unfortunately, the way the pieces were hung made it impossible to take clear photos. I was not a big fan of the show either way. The paintings looked like temporary walls surrounding the lobby café. I'm not sure what he was going for here.
Willy Chyr's work My friend Alex's residency ended at the Swatch hotel and he's now in tropical Kuala Lumpur visiting his sister (who I went to high school with). He left a painting of his for me as a parting gift and my next stop was to pick it up from another artist's studio at Swatch. Willy Chyr is from Chicago and seems to have a lot on his plate. In addition to taking portraits of artists (he took a great one of Wu Ding lighting Jam's cigarette in her studio. This piece is part of Museum of Unknown's new show at the Power Station), he's also working on an "art" video game. To help design different levels of his game, he decided to make models of his virtual world. Pictured above is a funny little vignette in his ever expanding world. He bought hundreds of tiny figurines on Taopu to populate this world. I told him he should look up Liliana Porter, who makes incredible little worlds with just a piece of paper and a tiny toy.
Willy took me down the hall to visit his friend Evgeny Bondarenko, a Russian artist. I hit the aesthetic jackpot with this one! Drawings and sketches everywhere. They were loose and improvisational but carefully composed at the same time. There are so few artists nowadays who work so traditionally, which is a shame because pleasures can be found in the familiar.
I'm off to Hong Kong Wednesday morning for Art Basel. I'll try to report regularly on all the happenings, the hot parties (which I dread), the gossip. Oh yeah, and the art.
I'm off to Hong Kong Wednesday morning for Art Basel. I'll try to report regularly on all the happenings, the hot parties (which I dread), the gossip. Oh yeah, and the art.
RSS Feed