NYC Art Shows- Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 182023
 

“Untitled (Thicket)”, 2022, Steel, wood and paint

“Untitled”, 2020-22, Bronze and paint (two parts)

“Untitled (Fence I)”, 2020, Papier mache

Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca location draw the eye in with their textures, colors, and in some the unique combinations of items. They are even more intriguing when you discover they are often not what they first appear to be.

From the press release-

As is typical in Whiteread’s work, the sculptures in this exhibition communicate a high-low dialogue: discarded, seemingly inconsequential items are rendered in often precious, high-art materials, which transforms and elevates them from their original context and reading. The eye is tricked, and careful observation is required of the viewer. What appears to be spray-painted cardboard is in reality patinated bronze or silver, or shimmering metallic papier-mache, and assemblages of found materials are in reality amalgams of both found objects and hand-crafted simulacra. Cartons, boxes, branches, crates, cardboard, packing materials, and pipes overlap and interchange, creating an installation that becomes a pleasing visual puzzle. Whiteread created the works for this exhibition specifically with the light-filled, high-ceilinged Tribeca gallery in mind, so a beautiful optical play with colors and materials punctuates the space and draws the viewer into close examination of these human-scaled pieces. Silver and bronze casts of empty, anonymous boxes have a weighty presence, in contrast to the disposable nature of their form. The floor pieces are ghostly white assemblages of both found and cast objects, mostly debris; sitting wraithlike on the floor, each beckons the viewer to circle them and decode their elements.

This exhibition closes 4/22/23.

 

NYC Art Shows- Franz West at David Zwirner

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 122023
 

There are only a few days left to see Franz West’s large, fun sculptures, Echolalia, at David Zwirner in NYC.

From the press release-

Executed in 2010, only a few years before the artist’s death, Echolalia consists of seven colorful, larger-than-life sculptures that seem to stand slightly off-balance, interspersed with three cushioned divans. The work’s title—which refers to the repetition of words and sounds made by young children when learning to talk—was inspired by the artist’s son, who at the time of its creation was three years old and brought his own, distinct perspective to his father’s oversized works.

Not exhibited publicly in more than ten years, the work represents the apotheosis of West’s commitment to sculpture as social space, integrating the viewer within an immersive, total environment. Conceptually, the installation manifests the intersection of many of West’s ongoing interests—most notably, the playfulness of sculpture, the participation of the viewer, and the importance of language.

A voracious reader throughout his lifetime, West was constantly and consistently incorporating various philosophical, psychoanalytical, and historical lines of thinking in his work, as though language itself was another material one could work with.

When Echolalia debuted in Rome in 2010, West published excerpts from the readings that came to influence the work, which included writings from figures across eras and disciplines, including Jacques Lacan, William Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Mike Davis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Max Weber, and over a dozen others.

West’s sculptures and installations often invite the public’s interaction, engaging his viewers in order to subvert traditional exhibition models. In the mid-1970s, he began creating his so-called Passstücke, or Adaptives, a number of which are on view in a concurrent exhibition of West’s work at our Paris gallery.

These roughly hewn, abstracted sculptural forms were intended to be handled by the viewer in a manner of his or her choosing, thereby “adapting” the works to their own physical being and context.

Extending this interest, in Echolalia, the individual sculptures are seemingly weightless and on wheels, meaning the exhibitor can hypothetically rearrange these elements, interacting with the sculpture and evidencing the artist’s longstanding fascination with spatial manipulation and play.

This exhibition closes 4/15/23.