London – The art berries

The struggle in all artistic pursuits

Franz West
Sisyphos sculptures
Gagosian, Davies Street, London, UK
June 8 – July 27, 2018

In Greek mythology Sisyphus or Sisyphos was the first king of Ephyra, who was punished by Zeus for his deceitfulness and proudness and forced to roll a heavy boulder up a steep hill, only for it to roll down when it nears the top, repeating this action for eternity.

The last art exhibition there was at the Gagosian in Davies Street, London, by Franz West (Vienna, 1947 – Vienna, 2012) referred to the myth told above. The show ended last week, so you’ll have to see these artworks somewhere else they travel to. But, I wanted to share them with you nevertheless, because I think that the sculptures are beautiful and I like the photos we did when we performed at the art space.

Belonging to a generation of artists exposed to the Actionist and Performance Art of the 1960s and 70s, Franz West rejected the idea of a passive relationship between artwork and viewer. He investigated the dichotomy between private and public, action and reaction, both in and outside the gallery, and used everyday materials and imagery to examine art’s relation to social experience.

The Sisyphus myth the artist referred to with this show at the Gagosian gallery is an exploration of the unrelenting frustration of the creative process, the struggle involved in all artistic pursuits that artists and creative people in general are so familiar with.

Franz West unconventional sculpures often require an involvement of the audience, so they are the perfect example of artworks The art berries like to perform with. The ones where the artist encourages the interaction and don’t see our performance as an interference in their work. Having said that, I do believe that everyone should be free to interact with art and enjoy the arts as they please, as long as the artworks are respected. And that is indeed one of the missions of The art berries project.

For the photos displayed here we played with the notions of hide and exposure frequently touched by the artist in his career. Also by lying on the floor, we seem to be resting from the Sisyphean creative struggle. Only for a moment!

La lucha en todas las actividades artísticas

Franz West
Esculturas de Sísifo
Gagosian, Davies Street, Londres, Reino Unido
8 de junio – 27 de julio de 2018

En la mitología griega, Sísifo o Sisyphos fue el primer rey de Ephyra, que fue castigado por Zeus por su comportamiento engañoso y su orgullo, y obligado a rodar una pesada roca por una colina empinada, solo para que ruede cuando se acerca a la cima, repitiendo esta acción por toda la eternidad.

La última exposición de arte que hubo en la galería Gagosian de Londres del artista Franz West (Viena, 1947 – Viena, 2012) se refería al mito mencionado anteriormente. La muestra terminó la semana pasada, por lo que tendrás que ver estas obras de arte en otra galería o museo al que viajen. Pero, quería compartirlas contigo, porque creo que las esculturas son bonitas y me gustan las fotos resultantes de la interacción con las esculturas en este espacio.

Perteneciente a una generación de artistas expuestos al Actionist y Performance Art de los años 60 y 70, Franz West rechazó la idea de una relación pasiva entre obra de arte y espectador. Investigó la dicotomía entre lo privado y lo público, la acción y la reacción, tanto dentro como fuera de la galería, y utilizó materiales e imágenes cotidianas para examinar la relación del arte con la experiencia social.

El mito de Sísifo al que el artista se refirió con esta exposición en la galería Gagosian es una exploración de la frustración del proceso creativo, la lucha permanente que rodea a todas las actividades artísticas con las que los artistas y las personas creativas en general estamos tan familiarizados.

Las esculturas no convencionales de Franz West a menudo requieren la participación de la audiencia, por lo que son el ejemplo perfecto de obras de arte con las que nos gusta hacer un ‘performance’ a The art berries. Aquellas en los que el artista fomenta la interacción y no ve nuestro ‘perfomance’ como una interferencia en su trabajo. Habiendo dicho eso, creo que el público debería ser libre de interactuar con el arte y disfrutar del arte como le plazca, siempre y cuando se respeten las obras de arte. Y esa es de echo una de las misiones del proyecto The art berries.

Para las fotos que se muestran aquí, jugamos con las nociones de ocultar y mostrar que con frecuencia tocó el artista en su carrera. También al tumbarnos en el suelo parece que descansamos de la lucha creativa de Sísifo. Sólo por un momento!

Making air solid

Past art shows: Rachel Whiteread, Tate Britain
12 September 2017 – 24 January 2018

Rachel Whiteread is one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists and my favourite from the YBA group. The latest art exhibition she had at Tate Britain, London, a few months ago revealed the trajectory of her career over three decades from 1988 to date. Time in which she’s been casting the so-called “negative spaces” using a variety of materials such as plaster, resin, rubber, concrete, metal and paper. But what are Whiteread’s “negative spaces”? The air that surrounds our daily experience or the inner world of objects. We find them in our house, in toilet paper rolls, beneath chairs or inside the mattress we sleep on every night. She makes these “negative spaces” solid with her sculptures.

The original idea comes from the US artist Bruce Nauman work titled “A Cast of the Space Under My Chair” (1965-8) that Whiteread referenced in this art exhibition with her “Untitled (One Hundred Spaces)” (1995) showed across the south part of the Duveen galleries at Tate Britain; 100 casts of the underside of chairs in changing shades of coloured resin and with their own flaws. Whiteread, however, has gone further.

Her work ranges in scale from the modest to the monumental and plays with paradoxes such as capturing human wear and experience with geometric white shapes and minimalism.

Tate Britain showed Whiteread’s most important large scale sculptures such as “Untitled (Book Corridors) 1997-8” and “Untitled (Stairs) 2001”, both of which I captured on two photos here, alongside her more intimate works with domestic objects such as tables, boxes or hot water bottles. And then, in the middle of the art show stood “Untitled (Room 101)”: the plaster cast of the BBC office, demolished in 2003, which inspired George Orwell’s torture chamber in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I first discovered Whiteread as an artist in 2005 and became intrigued with her work. She then populated the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern with a huge labyrinth-like structure entitled “Embankment” made from 14,000 casts of the inside of different boxes. She chose the form of a cardboard box because of its associations with the storage of intimate personal items and to invoke the sense of mystery surrounding ideas of what a sealed box might contain.

Born in London in 1963, Whiteread studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic and sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. She was the first woman to win the Turner Prize in 1993 and went on to represent Britain at the 1997 Venice Biennale. She first came to public attention with the unveiling of her first public commission “House” in London’s East End in 1993. A concrete cast of the interior of an entire Victorian terraced house with imprints or doors, windows and fireplaces in great detail. The house only stood for a few months before its demolition, but heralded Whiteread’s life-long project as an artist: fusing domestic narratives with brutalist architecture and minimalism.

Rachel Whiteread exhibition at Tate Britain was curated by Ann Gallagher and Linsey Young. The exhibition was co-organised with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, curated by Molly Donovan, where it will be shown in autumn 2018, and will also tour to the 21er Haus Vienna and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

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The poetry in traditional crafts

Past shows: Martin Puryear at Parasol unit, London
18 Sept – 6 Dec 2017

It’s not often that I discover artists like Martin Puyear. I was truly interested on the body of work he presented at the Parasol Unit gallery in Shoreditch, London, end of last year, and really inspired by it. His abstract works are finely hand-made from wood and bronze and the use of craft methods and natural materials on the sculptures he creates shows a great respect to skilled craftsmanship. He proves that abstraction isn’t separate from traditional techniques and in fact it’s more relevant than ever. To me, this exhibition brought back the spirit of the Arts & Crafts Movement promoted by William Morris and Ruskin in the XIX century, with the joy of craftsmanship that it inspired and the natural beauty of materials.

Furthermore, with his works Puryear also explores social history and makes a very subtle political statement. In addition to the sculptures, the printmaking works presented on this gallery on the first floor offered a different perspective of the wood and bronze sculptures.

This exhibition was curated by Ziba Ardalan and was the artist’s first solo show in London. It presented over 30 works of sculpture and works in paper and spans 40 years of the artist’s practice. In the ground floor gallery there were large-scale works, such as the “Big Phrygian”, 2010–2014. This five-foot tall cedarwood sculpture, painted bright red, resembles the distinctive shape of a Phrygian cap, which is a soft conical cap with the top pulled forward. People of ancient Eastern Europe and Anatolia wore such caps, which in the modern world have come to signify the pursuit of liberty. This contrasted with the iron sculpture “Shackled”, 2014, which recalls the shackles worn by slaves when they were taken to America.

The African-American began exploring traditional craft methods in his youth, studied a BA in the States and went to spend two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leona, where he learned local woodworking techniques. Following this time in Africa, he spend two more years (1966-68) studying at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm before returning to the US to attend Yale University in 1971, where he received an MFA in Sculpture. His work is widely exhibited and collected both in the United States and internationally.

“I value the referential quality of art, the fact that a work can allude to things or states of being without in any way representing them.” Martin Puryear.

For The art berries, performing with these works was like merging with nature. Almost like when an architect thinks about how to integrate his design within the surrounding landscape, but with a more humble approach of course! We hope you enjoy the photos!

A peek at the Californian mountains

Past shows: Ed Ruscha at the Gagosian gallery, London
“Extremes and In-betweens”
Oct 5 – Dec 17, 2016

This is an art show we visited more than a year ago and it’s not currently on. But I’ve decided to start my blog with it because it was very inspiring for me. It made me realised what I wanted to blog about and therefore, I owe it a first post here.

I first encountered Ed Ruscha’s work at Tate Modern and have been interested since. He’s called by many the Magritte of Los Angeles and one of the longest living pop artists. He produced all the works for this exhibition in 2016, and it was Gagosian’s first show of Ruscha’s paintings since an exhibition at its Rome gallery in 2014-15.

The novelty of this show is that the words appearing on the artworks were presented in logical sequences and in diminishing or augmenting typeface over a sand background in most of them; and with blue skies over the mountains of California in some other works, combined with a circled selected view that suggests we are having a peep in, but not part of this idyllic scenery.

As per the press release published by Farah Nayeri for The New York Times, Ruscha said about his works at the opening: “I’m not trying to wrap things up or make final statements or capture anything in a big way,” he said. “It’s more like, whatever the voyage is, that’s where I am. I’m just traveling along the tops of things, not trying to bring an answer to anything, necessarily, but just to keep making pictures.”

With the comments above, it appears to me that he doesn’t want to be categorical with these artworks, but exploratory with visual images as well as with words. A search done from a rather logical perspective.

The photo with raspberry adds a new layer to these artworks. She seems to be enjoying the solitude of these mountains and looking at us from within the scenery itself.