Twelve intensely rendered, colorful scenes of natural world violence and menace: Hyenas and chimps populate the pictures with dead and suffering impala, Wildebeest and gazelles. Some appear in repose-like agony among well-drawn dogweed blossoms, poppies and honeysuckle. Dismembering and disemboweling bring to mind Thomas Huxley's sensational descriptions of Darwinism. The gore seems too familiar, from images of war. The beautiful gestures and colors, plus one decorative pattern re-contextualize predation. While the apparent sadism of "Chimp Mother and Child" pushes the limits of what is natural the show as a whole draws a line between types of violence.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Art-99; a 99 word review.
John Walker @ Knoedler and Company through March 7, 2009
The achievement of most of these 70's abstract drawings is that the wide array of intense notation and subtle gesture avoids the suggestion of representation. At times the marks refer to the surface of the various papers, with scraping and accumulation. At others even atmospheric effects and luminescence skirt suggestion by confusing ground and surface. The picture plane is negated and some works appear as holes in large vertical rectangles. But then, as if to show how easy it is, a room full of faint and blurry landscapes depicting the same suburban house with a curving path before it.
Art-99; a 99 word review.
Peter Doig @ Michael Werner through March 14, 2009
The gallery contained three large apocalyptic landscape paintings. Two, facing each other, featured a central winged figure with skinny legs. In the third, a sublime blue potato fills the horizon over a red sea ("Mal D' Estomac"). One figure seems to be on a cliff overlooking an ocean, the other, down on the beach. Both are titled "Man Dressed as a Bat." Are they a rumination on the Batman of popular culture? Is this self appointed hero lacking a civilization to crave justice? They represent disillusion just the way a huge potato over an acid broth spells stomach ache.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Art-99; a 99 word review.
Fred Sandback @ Zwirner and Wirth through February 2009
Describing Sandback's work is ontologically exacting. Five pieces are comprised of just 42 lines. These are the "sculptures." It's not a contradiction of terms: exhibition of minimalism. One work is a single diagonal wire on a wall, skirting its number of dimensions. Two works make use of his hallmark implied volume. "Untitled (Gray Corner), two vertical strands on the wall eight inches from a corner, two bent horizontal rods connecting them, leave the viewer standing in excised space. The conflation of 2D and 3D and the use of actual volume to imply volume requires a spatial reckoning that approaches philosophy.
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