Category: Installation

Ellsworth Kelly in Black & White

The incredibly talented American painter and sculptor, Ellsworth Kelly is one of the main protagonists in Colour Field painting. Many of his pieces beautifully combines form, colour and space with a strong reduction of the visual language.

Kelly’s current exhibition located at the Museum Wiesbaden in Germany is devoted solely to his work in black and white. His black and white works now account for about one-third of his extensive oeuvre and provide information about the stages of his artistic development since the late 1940s. The artist has closely collaborated with Haus der Kunst to present a selection of 50 paintings and reliefs, supplemented by drawings and photographs.

This stunning and minimalist exhibition runs from 2 March to 24 June 2012. How I’d love to pay it a visit.

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Drawn Pink

Drawn Pink is a stunning forty-foot installation by Kansas City based artist Anne Lindberg, currently displayed at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha. The work is comprised of threads of Egyptian cotton held in place by staples. Over 23 miles of thread was used for the piece.

I am completely blown away by the subtle beauty of the colour balance. The object looks like a pink pencil drawing suspended in the air. People reportedly gasp upon seeing the work, which surprises me not one bit.

Check out the time lapse video of the installation. Drawn Pink is part of a group show, titled Placemakers, which will run at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts till March 31, 2012.

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7 Chairs

German multifaceted creative Jan von Borstel, based in Hamburg and London, is a designer, artist and consultant. Exhibiting graceful forms and simplicity with efficiency, von Borstel’s installations and products are wonderful examples of modernism in art and design. One such example is the evolution of 7 Chairs – a feature of his Snow White installation in London.

Made from laser-cut sheet metal, which is then bent and dipped in glossy white PVC, the chairs together represent the smooth metamorphosis from a relaxed lounge chair to an upright kitchen chair, which includes changes in seating height and backrest angle.

From the concept to the chair designs themselves, I really enjoy this.

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Doug Wheeler

If you happen to be in New York, do consider seeing Doug Wheeler’s light and space installation at the David Zwirner Gellery in Chelsea. It might reveal many new and fascinating things about the way you see, experience and perceive reality. And the best part: you will participate in this experiment both as a subject and as an observer…

Doug Wheeler (b. 1939) is a pioneer of the so-called “Light and Space” movement that flourished in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s. His works appeared in such venues as Tate gallery, London (1970), Salvatore Ala Gallery, Milan (1975), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1983), Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2000) and many others.

The installation I saw on the weekend was ambiguously titled SA MI 75 DZ NY 12. It is a large scale exhibit that brings you as close to stepping into the void as a person can get without enduring any imminent danger. You enter the white oblivion and walk toward what you know is the back wall. The shape of the room and the special way it is lit eliminate any depth perception. You feel that your eyes are failing you, all you can see is the infinite whiteness. The experience is thrilling and unsettling at the same time. People’s reactions to the room vary. Some linger on the edge, some freeze in the middle, some reach out, trying to feel the space around them. I kept going forward, and eventually my feet felt the curve. And this was the moment when I saw the room for the first time, its size, its shape, its texture. It was quite a discovery! The light in the room changes gradually from bright to dark in a 32-minute cycle, so you can test your senses within fluctuating light modes.

Doug Wheeler’s SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 installation is on display at David Zwirner through February 25, 2012.

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Shadow Art

Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita (1968) is known for creating realistic imagery from invisible sources. Her shadow art has earned Yamashita international recognition with works appearing in such venues as Seattle Art Museum, Boise Art Museum, Yerba Buena Centre, San Francisco, the Esplanade in Singapore, Hillside Gallery in Tokyo and the Kent Gallery in New York. The pieces are comprised of ordinary everyday things and a single light source, which brings these objects to life. Alphabets and building blocks, scattered across the wall, become realistic human figures, coloured resin plates give shape to facial silhouettes, and credit card imprints create portraits.

Yamashita’s precision is staggering. It is amazing to see how these sophisticated, coherent and very detailed images have been originated. These works are exhaustively complex in execution and yet manage to remain simple and minimal to the eye.

Kumi Yamashita will be having solo exhibitions at the Sato Museum, Tokyo and the Dillon Gallery, New York in 2012.

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Sculpting Sound

The Swiss artist Zimoun is currently exhibiting his latest installation at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida (USA), which runs until January 08 2012. Zimoun, previously featured on Minimalissimo, builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound using simple and functional components, which result in unique and quite beautiful soundscapes.

The Sculpting Sound installation, curated by Matthew McLendon is an example of structural simplicity in an industrial-like setting, which reveals an intricate relationship between the artificial and the organic. Zimoun’s creations often use multiples of the same prepared mechanical elements to examine the creation and degeneration of patterns.

If I was in the vicinity, this would be a must-see. Fantastic.

→ Watch the Sculpting Sound video

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Works in Paper

Sydney-based freelance designer and paper artist Bianca Chang has created a beautiful bespoke collection of 3-dimensional letterforms – Works in Paper.

The recreation of the 3D effect was achieved by hand-plotting and cutting multiple sheets of 80gsm 100% post consumer waste recycled paper. This minimises the impact of paper consumption and consciously transforms a typically disposable medium into a long term piece of art.

Whether or not you’re a type fiend, the shadow-play and subtlety of tones are undeniably brilliant.

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Milkstones

German artist Wolfgang Laib is well known for his sculptures known as Milkstones. These works consist of a block of marble containing very shallow depressions that are filled with milk. The combination and contrast of materials and textures make the tactility of the work quite vivid, even if you haven’t (myself included), seen these in person.

As this article by Mark Stevens points out:

Pouring milk on stone took on the sacramental air of ritual; the milk itself evoked intimacy, nurture, purity, and the beauty of first things. It was, as he said, at once “chaste and sensual,” joining milk to marble, soft to hard- the two became inseparable in these works- reflected the Eastern aspiration of harmonizing opposites.

Laib is also well known for his beautiful, and painstaking installations of yellow pollen.

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Character

Character is a Finnish company that recycles old neon signs, created by designer Aleksi Hautamäki.

Their process consists in choosing the most stylish letters and turning them into individual and unique design objects, and their sustainability is further enhanced by replacing the neon tubes with LEDs. They add a transformer, install a power cord and off the letters go with a new life cycle. You can even buy one online.

Neon signs have this capacity to attract and focus one’s attention, stripping away their surroundings – a single neon letter enhances that effect even more so. In these installations photographed by Johan  Warden, they become minimalist beacons, softly illuminating unexpected new spaces.

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Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective

New York’s Metropolitan Museum is hosting until the 28th of August the first retrospective of drawings by contemporary North-American artist Richard Serra, presenting a comprehensive overview of forty years of his drawing activity.

The exhibition presents the evolution of Serra’s drawings throughout the 1970’s (when he turned to black paintstick, a crayon comprised of a mixture of pigment, oil, and wax, creating heavily textured works, frequently very large in scale) to recent times.

The show culminates in site-specific, large-scale works that, despite not yet reaching the monumental size of his maxisculptures, still produces a spatial effect that is equally disorienting to the senses.

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