Tag Archives: writing about art/ artists

Psycho Buildings (artists take on architecture) at the Hayward Gallery (28th May – 25th August 2008)

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After emptying all the money out of my pocket to get into the Hayward (always an expensive trip!) I walked into Ernesto Neto’s ‘stone lip, pepper tits, clove love, fog frog, 2008′. At first glance looks like a spider web gone mouldy, and it smells like it too! I am truly disappointed. The structure looks like it is held up by weird misshapen plywood legs akin to those that kids use for dinosaur models that you can buy in flat pack at the natural history museum. The only thing that I want to do apart form burn it down is touch it and you are not allowed to. I can however see out of the corner of my eye Michael Beutler’s multi-coloured gargantuan maze titled ‘sandwiches, dobbels and burgers’. This is a true intervention; he has even left his tools inside the construction for you to see the inner workings of his favella, and let you know how he has managed to produce his huge framework. The sheets of tissue paper stuck to wire frames. This is man who was brought up on Lego. The interaction of the different colours layered by the building let some lights permeate through and others are block inducing a darkened more calming atmosphere on the inside. As you look deeper into the structure you find that there are holes where people have tried to test the building, how strong is the
paper? I think this is the most insightful aspect of the whole show. The
interactivity, how far can you push things? What happens if?


This is definetly an aspect of the Austrian collective Gelatin’s ‘normally proceeding and unrestricted without title’ They have flooded part of the roof in the Hayward gallery in
order to create a boating lake. The interactivity is amazing, a truly audacious
activity, but most shocking and brilliant is their natural disregard for health
and safety. The construction is akin to a treehouse that you would create in your back garden. Utilising all the leftovers from the sofa for chairs, and cupboards for flooring. The boats are made from spare mdf and water dispenser bottles for buoyancy. Even more amazing is the fact that you can row to the edge and see people below. Fantastic! I am so glad that finally people are getting to experience art. They are taking
their lives in their hands and grappling with the content hands on. What more
can you ask of a day out? What more can you ask of an Artwork? Thank you
Hayward and thank you Gelatin.

Vilhelm Hammershoi Show at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Sackler Wing galleries. 28th June -7th September 2008.

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It is always exciting to go to the “RA” it encapsulates a certain history, that gives everything that it shows a sort of credence. It has never let me down, and this show did not disappoint. Hammershoi (15 May 1864 – 13 February 1916) is a Dutch painter who’s
oeuvre covers the traditional genres of that period, (interiors, portraits, figure paintings, landscapes and architectural pictures) yet he brings to these subjects a distinctively modern sensibility, which can be seen in the pale monochromatic surfaces, his tendency toward abstraction, and the sometimes unreal light which are painted in his trademark muted palette. You can just imagine this quiet loner painting to his hearts content. He was a very well traveled man, ( with the greatest number of trips being to London) however when in his native Copenhagen hardly left his house. This is probably why the interiors are so haunting.

The first striking factor is that for a weekday in the early afternoon the gallery is rammed full. Geriatrics everywhere! So when they have toddled off I take a closer look.
There is great use of a very simplistic palate. His use of pale colours just
emboldens the grey structure of the picture. This is corralled by the very
directed brushstrokes painstakingly dedicated to illuminate the framework of
the room. He depicts his home and its contents as if it were an assemblage or a
still life. It is the silent rooms that are precisely his subjects.

The absolute corker of the whole show has to be the interior of the great hall in Lindegarden. The first aspect that you are drawn into is the portrayal of the dramatic ceiling. The detailing like fine doily covers the ceiling and pushes your eye through the
painting. Towards the far wall where pensively there are two doors. One open
one closed, some quite simple symbolism there to make the point, but altogether
not that necessary. I am already in love with this painting, in its descriptive
starkness. The wall contains a domed alcove that typifys the grandure of the
whole space but seems so incongruent to this sparse documentation of empty
floor boards. Why is this alcove so empty? Why are the owners not there to
lounge in this once glorious abode? The narratives are endless, that is why
this painting becomes so interesting for me. However there are less interesting
aspects of the show the landscapes and buildings leave a little to be desired
in comparison. They are too cut and dried. The ‘ghost town’ look doesn’t read
as well on large scales. I am not drawn into the paintings immaculate details
because I know that there aren’t any to look for. They are too expansive.

Hammershoi’s has obviously been a great influence on many contemporary painters, an obvious example is Luc Tuymans. However he is quite modern in his creation of artwork, he creates variations on a single theme, much like his contemporary Morandi. In the suite of paintings depicting his apartment in the Strandgade, for example, he
repeatedly shows half-empty rooms with their meager surroundings, a chair, a
few pictures on the walls, a fine porcelain bowl and that’s all. Hammershoi doesn’t have the same clunkyness that Morandi achieves, but he doesn’t want to he still wants to achieve that classical architectural style that Canaletto produced and that the cannon revolves around. Far less attention has been given to his distinctive landscapes and monumental architectural pictures, both strangely emptied of the presence of people, with an oddly unreal, Alice in wonderland character.

Pollock’s to Painting 2008

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Pollock is the greatest protagonist in the battle for painting. He raises all the questions
that an artist especially a modern painter should. But using gesture is only postponing the problems of painting, and creating a far more intoxicating discussion for painting. In placing himself inside the painting, not only as the messenger but also as the subject
he destroys the mythical space between the canvas and the artist. He
extinguished the desire of possession that is created in, and by, that space.
Within his gestures he ram raids through the shop window of all painting with
perspective, stealing all of their thunder, their narrative and conventions.
But paradoxically has now driven painting down a cul de sac. Pollock dramatised
his entrapment in his last works, attempting to re-negotiate his drip technique
in a longing for figuration. He seemed to have worked through to an ending point.

One of painting dilemmas in the twentieth century is this seeming conflict or antagonism , between painting’s representational function and its self- reflection. Paintings should not be a thesis but an argument. As such it is meant to serve. Its purpose is to consider the space into which a painting draws the spectator (its fictional space), assigning them a place in the charade of ‘viewing’. It contains the space of the painting and the space of the viewer, they overlap but are irreducible. The artist and the viewer both, in turn observe the painting, which from moment to moment, never ceases to change its content, its form, its face, its identity. The fact that painting has survived this aesthetic turmoil is perhaps due to this capacity to endlessly renew that feeling of separation, the critical distance experienced by the viewer in front of the canvas. To the artist, making a painting is first of all a private act aimed at a personal eye; its value in the open world being the degree to which it can engender the relationship between the idea
manifesting on the canvas and the thoughts and experience of the individual viewer.

Richter, a painter whose work and thinking about painting has been a hugely influential on younger artists, has vividly described his ‘pioneering ‘ attitude to making
pictures. “If I paint an abstract picture. I neither know in advance what
it is suppose to look like, nor where I intend to go while I am painting, what
could be done, to what end. For this reason the painting is quasi blind”.

Painting creates the clearest equivalent to the process of seeing, by placing the viewer in the position of the artist, with nothing but the canvas before them. In this process of identification with the role of the artist, the viewer reoccupies the centre of the scene. this gaze that organises the painting and the gaze for which it is displayed meet in that present moment. Is this ability to see and be seen, to be both painter and viewer.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008_Designed by Frank Gehry, 20 July – 19 October

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Frank Gehry

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission is an ongoing programme of temporary structures. The Pavilion architects to date are: Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen, 2007; Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, with Arup, 2006; ?Ålvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond, Arup, 2005; MVRDV with Arup, 2004 (un-realised); Oscar Niemeyer, 2003; Toyo Ito with Arup, 2002; Daniel Libeskind with Arup, 2001; and Zaha Hadid, 2000.

Frank Gehry’s Pavilion now sits dwarfing the serpentine gallery. The originality and intrigue that is associated with Ghery’s architecture, puts it on the plane of sculpture. The spectacular structure is four massive steel columns and is comprised of large timber planks and a complex network of overlapping glass planes that create a dramatic, multi-dimensional space. part-promenade, these seemingly random elements make a transitional space from outside to inside, whilst keeping
Frank Gehry said: ‘The Pavilion is designed as a wooden timber structure that acts as an urban street running from the park to the existing Gallery. Inside the Pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide for shade during sunny days. The Pavilion is much like an amphitheatre, designed to serve as a place for live events, music, performance, discussion and debate. As the visitor walks through the Pavilion they have access to terraced seating on both sides of the urban street. In addition to the terraced seating there are two elevated seating pods, which are accessed around the perimeter of the Pavilion. These pods serve as visual markers enclosing the street and can be used as stages, private viewing platforms and dining areas.’

Recent criticism of Gehry suggests he is repeating himself. It is claimed that his use of disjointed metal curved roofing that has become Gehry’s trademark is clich?©d, and that almost all of his recent work seems too derivative. Try telling that to a Warhol enthusiast! However it seems that he has branched out of this mode of working to produce this wooden pagoda like construction. Its use of flat planes elevated at different angles creates a different kind of dynamicity. This is a man who’s process of making is very similar to an artist, his style has progressed. Although many of his buildings have maintained the vocabulary of rolling metallic forms, within this motif is incredible variety and innovation. See Naum Gabo’s work for an excellent example of creative linear sculpture. He even once appeared as himself in The Simpson’s where he parodied himself by intimating that his ideas are derived by looking at a crumpled paper ball. He has obviously been stealing ideas off Martin Creed.

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