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    contemporary art, installation art, Uncategorized, video installation

    Mark Leckey, GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction (2010)

    June 2, 2011
    Mark Leckey, Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London (19 May – 26 June 2011) © 2011 Mark Blower

    The fridge looks nothing like my fridge. In truth it is more like a “dark mirror”, a “walled garden” or a “monstrous insect”, all comparisons made by an anguished, robotic first person voiceover.

    Manufacturers Samsung surely realise they are in the business of fabricating metaphors. How else could they justify a $1,799 price tag for a basic function which could cost you less than 100 notes.

    To make their point, they’ve painted it black. The 30 cubic foot machine comes in the same colour as a limo. Its resemblance to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey goes without saying.

    Flanking Plasma screens build on this cosmic potential by juxtaposing the fridge with, at one point, a soup of fossilised sludge and, at another, the Northern Lights.

    Animated coolant passes through the condenser, narrated with reference to the moon and the sun. Like a cruel god, the machine is said to “torment” and “humiliate” the liquid.

    Our own hunger for the hi-tech is suggested by a cropped shot of the artist’s knees, rubbed in anticipation as lavish food shots fill the background behind the immobile, yet sentient unit.

    The fridge onscreen soon attains more presence than the fridge in the room. After 20 minutes, the real thing starts looking very finite against the gallery’s green screen infinity cove.

    Less affluent folk would normally come across this appliance on an advert or as a piece of aspirational product placement in a movie. Our present view from behind the camera punctures that.

    In fact the more reverence which smooth marketeers and satisfied customers give to their smart goods, the funnier this piece becomes. Because green screen action cuts both ways.

    Mark Leckey: SEE, WE ASSEMBLE is at Serpentine Gallery until 26 June 2011. See gallery website for more details. If you’re thinking of buying the fridge, it’s a Samsung RFG293HABP.

    chiaroscuro, contemporary art, contemporary painting, installation art

    Ben Ashton, 01:23 Monday, 13:30 Sunday, 13:04 Sunday, 23:39 Wednesday, 20:00 Thursday, 15:37 Sunday, 13:35 Sunday, 04:23 Saturday and 17:45 Tuesday (2011)

    May 31, 2011

    Although there may be no candles in these painted scenes, there is arguably candlelight. There is certainly romance and the echoes of a nocturnal interior by, say, Georges de la Tour.

    And in this light the vulnerable nudes, of which there are three, also call to mind Rembrandt. It may be worked out they are Ben Ashton’s wife. Other panels show them together and him at work.

    But whereas a gilt frame might invite you in to an intimate scene by a baroque master, Ashton has crafted three-dimensional wood panels which throw these domestic scenes into relief.

    Six of the paintings are on trapezoid blocks which look like inversions of sacred icons. Three are on roundels or plaques which look designed for the exterior of a building, not a gallery wall.

    These intimate scenes have not been casually thrust upon us. The rightmost panel shows the artist hard at work sawing and planing the rest of the piece. But he looks unaware of the end result.

    The leftmost panel shows his wife (we can work out the relation between them) bent over a screen. It is one of the nudes, lit by the glow of a laptop rather than a secretive 17th century candle.

    It is tempting to say that here it is the internet which has turned the modern home inside out. But painters have long revealed their interior life and the life of their interiors.

    In the flanking panels of this installation, Ashton appears to set the old and new technologies in opposition. Perhaps that is why in a self portrait in panel eight he looks so full of doubt.

    But since each element of this wall is titled with a day of the week and a time from the 24hr clock, it suggests he too embraces digital technology. Just as in panel three he embraces his wife.

    As this all suggests, the piece has a creeping sense of drama. Two of the most engaging panels show the pair denuding themselves with, respectively face cream and shaving foam.

    In other words, it is a soap opera. Where painters once used candlelight to heighten the pictorial drama, in a digital age they can (must?) use irony and art historical references.

    Ben Ashton’s work can be seen in group show Shifting Boundaries at Phoenix, Brighton, until 12 June 2011. See gallery website for more details. And read an interview with the artist on london art.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 28/05/11

    May 28, 2011

    Having been away for a few days, there seem to be some especially good reads this weekend:

    • Art event of the week was neither an opening nor an auction sale, but surely a blog post and the 300 comments it generated. Suffice to say, Jonathan Jones doesn’t rate Mark Leckey.
    • So much for the artistic boycott of China. In Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green reports on Chinese attempts to withdraw Ai Weiwei’s work from Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
    • Meanwhile on artnet, Matthew Bown talks about the medieval cult of relics. Quite a long read, but then it does tell you everything you might ever need to know about contemporary art. Really.
    • Two weeks until the Vorticism show at Tate Britain, but Craig Raine has already seen it. In the Guardian he suggests you don’t hold your breath, unless you’re a fan of the Monkees.
    • The axis of time has flipped, according to music journalist Simon Reynolds. Find out how/why/wtf in this thoughtful interview with Dan Fox in Frieze.
    • It’s turning into a musical week all round, as The Paris Review interviews the author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad. Great book, modest guy.
    • But today is also a sad day for music. RIP Gil Scott-Heron. Pay tribute by watching YouTube clips on Animal blog.
    • This week has also seen the obituaries of Leonora Carrington, a surrealist painter who led a remarkable life. Would love to see a biopic by Guillermo del Toro.
    • With captions like these, who needs pictures: an entertaining tour of the Milwaukee Art Museum by Carolina Miranda at C-MONSTER.net.
    • Knowing people who can’t find a nice family home in Brighton, it should be said this high security villa in Warsaw looks idyllic. Story by Kyle Chayka on Hyperallergic.
    • Finally, if you like short fiction, there’s a brilliant site called InkTears who will send you one new story each month. (Starting with one of mine, if you’re quick!)

    contemporary art, performance art, philosophy, video installation

    Plastique Fantastique, Impossible Diagrams

    May 27, 2011

    What to make of a flicker between a bandaged head and a face carved in a brieze block. Or an unshaven mouth which hi-jacks a news report. Or self-immolation illustrated as if for a kids’ book.

    Quite a bit happens in the Plastique Fantastique show at Grey Area. Not all is easy to describe and even less is easy to interpret. The entertainment above is on a reel called PFTV.

    On this channel a masked and spangly demon pops up, curses us, and with a voice garbled-by-vocoder intones: “There is not and never has been anything to understand.”

    It transpires Plastique Fantastique are into the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. The love of nonsense and invention of mad schemas with which to overlay reality may come from there.

    So a nearby video installation breaks down PFTV content into idiot-proof diagrams. Captions such as “You taste the object/ The object tastes you,” are still stupefying.

    Still, you should never dismiss the incomprensible. Two Plastique Fantastique performances, documented here, the ritual punishment of a victim by a band of futuristic savages.

    Hanging the man from his feet may be aim at inverting the status quo. But if not, these scenes still feel urgent and deep in meaning. It’s a feeling; there may be no point understanding it.

    Impossible Diagrams is at Grey Area, Brighton, until May 29. See gallery website for more details.

    Uncategorized

    Simon Faithfull, Limbo (2011)

    May 25, 2011

    In April this year the story broke that now ubiquitous iPhones and 3G iPads are recording details of everywhere their owners go, storing locations and timestamps on a secret file.

    This may not be a conspiracy, but it would seem to be one more step towards a transparent world in which privacy belongs to a halcyon past before surveillance technology and the world wide web.

    But Simon Faithfull’s 10-year long project is located squarely where satellite positioning meets the mobile internet. Above you can see a rare example of a drawing with a geotag (bottom left).

    That’s what you might expect from a photo. And imaging technology also has a role to play in the laying bare of our lives. 1.85m CCTV cameras in Britain. Nearly 100 billion photos on Facebook.

    Considered together with Google Earth and Street View, this does appear to be a mad accumulation of empirical data. But the science of omniscience does have one major blindspot: subjectivity.

    Faithfull calls web-based artwork “an expanding atlas of subjectivity.” Unlike previous atlases, this one will therefore be infinite as no two viewpoints can really be the same.

    Nor can they be exhausted. The artist has stuck with the drawing software of an early Palm Pilot. It leaves wide empty spaces. It falls so far short of realism as to leave plenty to the imagination.

    And here is a perfect vessel for dreaming. Faithfull has just completed a four day residency on this cross channel ferry, giving it a mystique which even a sketchbook may have failed to.

    If you have an iPhone you can download a Limbo app and get fresh drawings from anywhere in the world. These too are secret files, clear if you experience the world, but invisible to your digital device.

    Limbo is the second 2011 web commission from Film and Video Umbrella. Check out some more of the drawings and get the app on the project website.

    British art, contemporary art, installation art, sculpture

    Mike Nelson, The Coral Reef (2000)

    May 18, 2011

    You are in the HEROIN ROOM. You can see: a painting, a broken chair, a lighter and some tin foil. There are exits: SE, SW. What do you want to do? _

    That’s not meant to be the worst dropped intro ever written, but a faithful reproduction of the game-like dynamics of one of Mike Nelson’s most labyrinthine works.

    Because for visitors of a certain age, making their way through the 14 rooms here is reminiscent of the text-based adventures which came on 80s computers. What do you see? Which way next?

    The video game experience seems fully intended. Somewhere near the heart of The Coral Reef is a vintage arcade machine, an obscure platformer called Black Magic.

    And there is something magical about the way you can interact with this work, and certainly something dark about the world which Nelson has created. Yet it’s as comic as pixels and bleeps.

    These days, seventh generation console games let you explore virtual worlds in ways we could not have dreamed of. But none compare with Nelson’s sculpture for potential suspended disbelief.

    So this blogger even went so far as to spend 15 disoriented minutes making a map. It looks a bit like a medieval mappa mundi, and it does contain spoilers, but get in touch if you’d like a pdf.

    All I can say is it was a shock to find so many political, religious and cultural extremists were living in such proximity. If we can get lost in a sculpture, we stand no chance in the world at large.

    Find out why Jonathan Jones said this work was “one of the true masterpieces of modern British art” by reading his 2010 blog post in the Guardian. Meanwhile Art Safarist Ben Davis rates Nelson’s chances of winning a Golden Lion at Venice this year.

    Unsurprisingly, this is one of the most blogged about pieces of art I have come across. For some good photos, check out Corinna Spencer’s.

    The Coral Reef can be seen as part of Tate Britain’s current display of Contemporary Acquisitions. And the gallery advise you to check it’s on view before visiting (or you could live dangerously).

    contemporary art, drawing, installation art, transgressive art

    Maxime Angel, Let My Eyes Be Your Mirror

    May 17, 2011

    From the pencil shavings and strewn magazines on the floor, it looks something like Maxime Angel has been living in the gallery. Indeed, there are reports she has slept on several works.

    She may even have slept inside the containerboard on the wall. The gallery assistant tells me the college-trained artist was also for a period of time a rough sleeper. Cardboard was canvas.

    Other details suggest Maxime is not exactly the girl next door. Visitors are confronted with the dark energy of a range of illustrated cocks and may spot two graphic all male orgy scenes.

    A spot of (desk) research confirms the artist is transgender, and HIV positive. So the lead-blunting skulls here are not just for effect. The memento mori have been lived in as well.

    Take away the biography and you would still have a show with charge. What it might lack in imagination and finesse, it makes up for with desire and suffering. No press release needed.

    But the life story will still impress. Angel sounds like an outlaw. Her exposure to life on the streets and a deadly pandemic are among factors which might just authenticate this work.

    Otherwise, it could still be said the show is a worthy example of an artistic tradition which dates back to the Salon des Refusés. It is powerful either way; too strong if anything.

    Let My Eyes Be Your Mirror is at Centre for Recent Drawing, London, until 17 June 2011. See gallery website for more details. There’s a brief but interesting Q&A with the artist in Dazed Digital.

    aggregation, contemporary art

    Found Objects 15/05/2011

    May 15, 2011

    We’ve had seven more days of neuron-firing stories on-line, including:

    • Scientists told the media that art can boost dopamine levels. But can it also give you the munchies? (from The Telegraph)
    • On artnet, Ben Davis considers the Vatican’s decision to put the Sistine Chapel online and asks how they can get their heads round Flash but not gay rights, etc.
    • In the Guardian, Jenny Uglow writes about the peaking popularity of the Lake District. Art seems to have only served to wreck the place.
    • And some say that kaleidoscopic building exteriors are out of control in Baghdad. The New York Times reports, but there are worse things surely than an ‘anarchy of taste’.
    • Formerly homeless Maxime Angel has good reasons for working with cardboard as Laura Bushell finds out on Dazed Digital.
    • Hyperallergic carries a picture of the painting that’s waited 25,000 years to come back into fashion.
    • Whereas, milliseconds are ‘almost leisurely’ in the brave new world of automated trading. Donald MacKenzie writes a startling account of this mind-boggling practice in London Review of Books.
    • Pictures probably do more justice than words to the latest work by Anish Kapoor. The Independent obliges, but (at time of post) cannot seem to decide how to spell Leviathan.
    • Film-maker Harmony Korine makes a film about curb dancing that’s both parody and celebration. For a less surreal example of the genre, Cf. this clip (Via Animal NY).
    • Perhaps one day I’ll see a meme like this in my pending comments folder. Slate offers a reason to keep it brief.

    architecture, contemporary art, film installation, Middle East, sculpture

    KutluÄŸ Ataman, Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / Mayhem (2011)

    May 13, 2011

    KutluÄŸ Ataman has got into the spirit of the Brighton Festival with a carnivalesque metaphor for the recent turmoil in the Arab world: a waterfall which defies gravity.

    (This reading of Mayhem needs its full context, a series named after a region encompassing Iraq, Iran and Syria. And nearby here is another piece (Su) in which Islam is a more explicit theme.)

    But the relative safety of an art space in the West, gives us some distance from this drama. Like a television with the sound down, Ataman’s film cools off the spectacle of unrest.

    Indeed water is used often in Islamic architecture for this very purpose: to keep occupants cool. Three of the channels are projected onto the floor like pools in a mosque.

    In a visual sense, this is a monumental feat of plumbing. The work offers a strong contrast with the vast disused space of the Old Municipal Market and its dusty concrete floors.

    And at the risk of wearing out his name, Duchamp did once say that plumbing was the difference between sculpture and architecture. His fountain and Ataman’s both play with that distinction.

    But only a sculptural film installation could harness the power of the Iguazu Falls. This wild South American region is also called Mesopotamia. But which one is the newer world?

    The Old Municipal Market is on Circus Street, Brighton, and the show runs until 29 May 2011. It’s organised by Lighthouse. See their website for more details.