Kendell Geers, 'Love, By Any Means Necessary
I think watching films and visiting exhibitions are effective ways to do research.In today's visit of soho, I went to the Hauser &Wirth gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery which shows me how artists presents works influenced greatly by their cultural inherit.
For instance, there was an exhibition called 'Kendell Geers, 'Love, By Any Means Necessary', Geers also draws inspiration from the contradictions inherent in his identity as an African artist. Describing himself as an ‘AniMystikAKtivist', he weaves together diverse Afro-European traditions, including animism, alchemy, mysticism, ritual and a complex socio-political activism laced with humour and irony. A large bronze female figure stands like a sentinel in the gallery window. Her hands have been cut off and replaced with shards of glass. From each broken arm a chain dangles, resembling shackles from which she has liberated herself. A group of smaller bronze masks are influenced by Kota reliquaries, the first sub-Saharan African artworks to be exhibited in the West, examples of which were on display during Pablo Picasso's famous visit to Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro, Paris in 1907.
Geers describes this exhibition as "a resurrection of spirit through an invocation of nature."
A new series of paintings and works on paper, ‘Les Fleurs du Mal', is titled after a volume of poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Charged with an intense longing and melancholia, these paintings depict cut flowers whose petals simultaneously take the form of bullet holes or wounds. Severed from their roots and invoking a memento mori, the beauty of these blossoms lies in their fragility. The repetition of an emblem in these works is also inspired by Dutch wax batik fabrics, whose brightly coloured patterns are a symbol of African identity yet are designed in Indonesia and produced in the Netherlands. The investigation of repetitive patterns is also found in the artist's wallpaper that covers the gallery wall and teases the viewer's peripheral vision.
Maxim Zhestkov, Layers, 2018
Maxim Zhestkov, Layers, 2018
Layers is a 4K digital art film directed by Maxim Zhestkov exploring the juxtaposition of the outside and inside. Computer-generated dark and brutal geometric monoliths are dissected by invisible 3D objects to reveal the layers of the colourful and emotionally vibrant inner structures. At the intersections of the shapes we encounter complex structures which could be perceived as 3D representations of objects within a 4D universe.
After the previous art films’ foray into the territory of imaginary gallery spaces (Elements and Volumes), Maxim decided to push further and explore the possibilities of impossible sculptures as the main character for this project.
Kenneth Armitage
External media
Jeff Lowe
These large prints share the dominating scale of his aluminium sculptures both of which fascinated me when I walked in the space at Pangolin London from mid-January. ‘In The Close Distance’ displays sculpture and printmaking alongside each other, presenting a replication of the layering process that builds the perspective of cylindrical, free-standing forms.
Ian Mckeever
Henri Matisse
What I dream of is an art of balance, purity, and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter... a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. ”
- Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse The Snail 1953
Bold, exuberant and often large in scale, the cut-outs have an engaging simplicity coupled with incredible creative sophistication.
Through looking longer the painting, I like the 'edge 'constructed irragularly, the sequences and positions of layers are worthy concerning.
Henri Matisse
Matisse has used color alone to describe the image. Her oval face is bisected with a slash of green and her coiffure, purpled and top-knotted, juts against a frame of three jostling colors. Her right side repeats the vividness of the intrusive green; on her left, the mauve and orange echo the colors of her dress.
Matisse' theory of color is exactly what I have interests to investigate further and apply in my own project. There is a wide space to explore balance between the warm and cold color in single paintings.I suppose the conflicts of color can bring unique feeling of harmony that is different from similar colours mixed.
Olafur Eliasson
Your uncertain shadow (colour) 2010 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Vienna. Photo: María del Pilar García Ayensa / Studio Olafur Eliasson © 2010 Olafur Eliasson
Exactly as description of Tate ,'In Eliasson’s captivating installations you become aware of your senses, people around you and the world beyond.'
Some artworks introduce natural phenomena such as rainbows to the gallery space. Others use reflections and shadows to play with the way we perceive and interact with the world.
My initial idea for current project proposal was about projecting ourselves on others.When I saw this work of Eliason, I found though the theme of the work is different from mine ,its method is very relative to my project.
In Eliasson's interview ,he talked about many works result from the his research into complex geometry, motion patterns, and his interest in colour theory.
TED talk --Olafur Eliasson
Note of Ted talk
'How do we configure the relationship between our body and the space'
How do we reconfigure it
How do we know being in a space makes a difference
Why rather than how
What is the concesequence if step does it it matter?
Art is not only about decorating the world and make it looks even better or even worse.It s obviously about taking responsibility
A space have dimensions ,A space have time
The idea that art can actually evaluate the relationship what does it mean in a picture ,what does it mean in space.What is the difference the difference between thinking and doing
Scuplture could be—— a way of measuring space
Dora Maar TATE MODERN EXHIBITION
Photographer-Dora Maar
Robyn Denny
Baby is Three 1960
© Robyn Denny
Manman 1957
is a preliminary sketch for ‘ManMan’ (1957). In 1957–58 Denny was including in his collages and paintings not only fragments of numbers or letters but also whole words and phrases. These were usually short and their function was ‘confined to the stimulus of recognition’ giving ‘the spectator a literary key to help him tune into the particular mood of the painting (GO GO, HA HA), or decipher the connotations of a significant form (ManMan). The words and the letters are bait to lure the eye out of the everyday world and into the world of the painting’.
The artist said that during his final year at the Royal College of Art his tutor urged him to paint figurative pictures. He thought of the words ‘man man’ at the time as being the simplest way to denote a person. In this sketch he scrawled out these words several times as if he were writing graffiti, and the words seemed to lose legibility. The slogan was similarly incorporated into the painting and gave the appearance of both representing the figure and graffiti on a wall.
On the back of the sketch is a small woodcut of a man in a chair by Pilgrim Wetton, a friend of the artist.
Published in The Tate Gallery Report 1972–1974, London 1975.