Lucy +Jorge Orta Antartica
Jane Lombard Gallery
Antarctica by Lucy and George Orta is an installation project that takes place in Antarctica where numerous tents created by the artists are placed in the frigid, untouched environment. The tents are covered with different flags and patterns of the world. I was pulled towards this exhibition most because it addressed issues having to do with the environment and politics. Antarctica is unclaimed territory, shared amongst many 50 nations in the Arctic treaty and is an example of international cooperation. By performing this piece, the aritsts are encouraging this same example of international cooperation to be used more often.
The exhibition is described on the webpage, “Antarctica embodies utopia: a continent whose extreme climate imposes mutual aid and solidarity, freedom of research, of sharing, and collaboration for the good of the planet. It is a place where the immaculate whiteness contains all the wishes of humanity to spread a message of hope for future generations.” I felt that this project was building the perfect community of cooperation for a common good.
Yutaka Sone
Day and Night
Day and Night is a combination of mediums and subjects, which include paintings of nighttime cityscapes, a marble cut sculpture of a movie theater, paintings of palm trees, and woven sculptures of palm trees. After hearing the presentation in class on this project, I was drawn to it for the artist’s use of collaboration with local artists in the Michoacán region of Mexico to create the woven palm trees.
Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibone
Forgetting the Hand
I really enjoyed Marcel Dzama and Raymond Pettibone’s Forgetting the Hand exhibition because it felt so lose and natural that you actually do forget that it was created with the hands of the artists. It felt playful, but at the same time addressed serious issues. The overlapping of materials from collages, paintings, to writing worked really well in the collaboration because it felt as if I was looking into the artists inner world. The paintings being directly done on the walls of the gallery with splotches on the floor gave a sense of the true process, and the artists presence in the space long after they have physically left the gallery.
Francis Upritchard and Martino Gamper
http://www.antonkerngallery.com/exhibit/francis-upritchard-and-martino-gamper/#/installation-view–661
This exhibition was a cross between furniture and sculpture by Francis Upritchard and Martino Gamper. It felt as if walking into someone’s living room. The arrangement of the chairs felt as if people have been sitting together and vanished into thin air, or as if the chairs are the people gathering and communicating with one another. One specific scene that stood out to me was the sculpture or the dinosaur like figure on the dining table with the chairs arranged around it. It felt like the chairs were responding to the sculpture the way we, the audience, is responding to the exhibition. There were also tiny sculptures placed around the setting, like a collection of token objects. While looking up the artists, I came across an article with a tour of their home and thought that this exhibition seems to be heavily influenced by their personal home.
Andrea Bowers: Whose Feminism is it Anyway?
http://www.andrewkreps.com/
Andrea Bowers Whose Feminism is it Anyway is a collection and collaboration of examples of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience in the trans feminist movement. Bowers focuses a lot on the important of achieving and collecting material. Over the weekend I actually went to an artist talk for the Agitprop show at the Brooklyn Museum which was a conversation between Martha Rosler, Nancy Buchanan, and Andrea Bowers. One thing that stood out that Bowers mentioned was how many artists leave out collaborators in the final exhibition and how that is unfair and wrong. But, she also does this in this show. At least from what I see, this is her body of work, but in the artist talk she discussed working with many many people in the making of the work.
Pace Gallery Irving Penn Personal Work
I really loved Irving Penn’s personal work because it displayed his curiosity in exploring the capabilities of the camera, and reveled what his true passion was rather than what he is traditionally known for. His famous fashion shots are to showcase the celebrity or the clothing, the subject matter. But, these photographs are to more to acknowledge the beauty in his craft.
Betty Tompkins
http://flagartfoundation.org/exhibitions/women-words-phrases-and-stories/
Betty Tompkin’s WOMEN- words, phrases, and stories includes 1,000 intimately-scaled, hand-painted works, each displaying a word or words used to describe women. I visited this exhibition last and noticed a connection that many of these works include achieving and collecting information from outside sources and research. I thought the format of this collection was extremely strong because it displayed the fact that women are looked at in so many different lights. Every women at different points in her life is looked at as many of these words, and many contradict each other. I liked looking at the individual words, but also stepping back and seeing all the words together creating one body. I also felt like the snippets of sentences felt like a conversation that I was apart of walking through the gallery. All in all, it proved how powerful just stating words paired with textures and colors can evoke and open the floor for a new dialog on how we perceive the women around us .
