Tuesday Schumaker-Jones critique- Untitled 2010

 

Untitled 2010 by Tuesday Schumaker-Jones, it's an installation piece located in the second floor of the Gloucester building. This is a very confrontational piece and immediately opens discussion among all the viewers. This piece is quite impressive not only for the strong graphic appearance but also because it leaves you questioning whether the moss is growing inside the room and is bursting to the outside or whether the moss has been placed there to create an illusion. Everything seems so real but so fake at the same time.... I cannot stop looking through the glass looking for clues to discover the truth of how this amazing effect has been achieved. This piece has been one of my favourite pieces this year and I think I can dare to call this a piece of art. This work it provokes a reaction on the viewer, it works aesthetically, loads of thought and effort has been put onto this which it makes me admire it even more. I find this piece quite magical and eiry. At some point there were a lot of discussion about the relationship between nature and space which I particularily did not understand very much. We all agreed that we should just admire the piece for what it is, a kind of what you see is what you get and not trying to overdue the analysis which it could risk taking us away from the beauty and simplicity of the work itself.

Louise Bourgeois, quotes

"You have to have the courage to take risks.
You have to have independence.
All these things are gifts.
They are blessings"


"I only work when I feel the need to express something.
I may not be sure of exactly what it is,
but I know that something is cooking and when I am on the right track.
The need is very strong.
To express your emotions, you have to be very loose and receptive.
The unconscious will come to you, if you have that gift that artists have.
I only know if I'm inspired by the results."


"Art is a privilege, a blessing, a relief.
Privilege means that you are a favorite, that what you do is not completely to your credit, not completely due to you, but is a favor conferred upon you.

Privilege entitles you when you deserve nothing. Privilege is something you have and others don’t. Art was a privilege given to me, and I had to pursue it, even more than the privilege of having children"


"The whole art mechanism is the result of many privileges, and it was a privilege to be part of it…The privilege was the access to the unconscious. It is a fantastic privilege to have access to the unconscious. I had to be worthy of this privilege, and to exercise it. It was a privilege also to be able to sublimate. A lot of people cannot sublimate. They have no access to their unconscious"

There is something very special in being able to sublimate your unconscious, and something very painful in the access to it..."


"What interests me is the conquering of the fear, the hiding, the running away from it, facing it, exorcising it, being ashamed of it, and, finally, being afraid of being afraid."

"When I was born my father and mother were fighting like cats and dogs. And the country was preparing for war, and my father who wanted a son got me, and my sister had just died. Please let me breathe."


"My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama."


"My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other."

"An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing."


"My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed. They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing."

"In real life, I identify with the victim. . . . In my art, I am the murderer. I feel for the ordeal of the murderer, the man who has to live with his conscience."

"Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation - and I like that."

"Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have
said."  

Jerwood drawing prize 2010, Jerwood Visual Arts London until 7th December 2010

   I enter this exhibition. I can see a big white and bright room with a varierity of experimental drawings all framed. I'm quickly getting my sketchbook out of my handbag. This is good, this is important to your practice, you need to soak everything you can, I tell myself and move from one piece to another. The winner's drawing (in the image above) reminds a bit of some of my drawings and I forced myself to take my drawings more seriously. There are lot of collages, I have never thougth about a collage being a drawing! this is already worth being here. Drawings made of pencil, oils, pens, paper, cardboard, very fine cuts on a paper forming a pallet, hot drinks marks on a table of different sizes and tones, drawing on flesh and the carriageway edges on the road shown in a video loop, a composition of textiles...all of them talking the same languague, being purely experimental, re-inventing drawing.

James Turrell, Gagosian Gallery until Dec 10th 2010

JAMES TURRELL
Dhātu, 2010
Mixed media
Dimensions variable

 

JAMES TURRELL
Bindu Shards, 2010
Mixed media
165 11/16 x 257 1/8 x 239 inches (421 x 653 x 607 cm)

JAMES TURRELL
Dhātu, 2010
Mixed media
Dimensions variable

James Turrell is an American artist that uses light as a material. He is interested in shifting the viewer's awareness away from autonomous pictures and objects towards the infrastructural process of looking at art. Turrell uses light to create unusual spaces where light can look solid and make objects appear to float.

At the gallery...
As I was approaching the piece "Bindu Shards" I got a feeling of being in a laboratory or part of some NASA studies. There were two assistants operating a huge white steel globe through a computer, both of them were wearing lab coats. I felt inmediately drawn to this piece and I wanted to know what it was all about, what it was inside. Unfortunately the day was fully booked so I couldn't have the chance to experiment all the lighting inside.

"Dhatu" is a magnificent light piece that greatly messes with all your senses. The piece can be viewed from three different angles, each one offers the viewer a different impression of the work. At first, seeing it by the corridor, the piece unfolds to me as a big screen offering a parade of lights changing colours, the steps or altar leading to the screen gives the feeling of being something mystic. In the other hand, when you look the piece from the front, the perception received is a completely one and  it becomes an interactive piece. What it looks like a flat screen from the other side, it happens to be the entrance to another room. The viewers were welcome to enter into this room full of light and in a question of a few minutes something that looked completely impenetrable became a passage onto another reality, almost quite celestial. I found particularly beautiful the contour of people's bodies against the bright light as they were entering into the "screen". Inside this room there was another screen projecting the light, that changed from red to green, white to pink... the light was dense, like fog. The awareness of space became distortioned, there was not a real sense of limits in this room. I urged to compare the two realities, the view of the outside seemed too dull now lacking energy. I have never had appreciated light like that before and neither felt such a conceptual representation of space.

Alejandro Chaskielberg and Esteban Pastorino Diaz, Brighton Photo Biennial Oct 2nd - Nov 14th 2010 University of Brighton gallery

Alejandro Chaskielberg.
From the series "The High Tide". 2010

Alejandro Chaskielberg is an Argentinian photographer. He began his professional career doing photojournalist, however the lack of creativity in this kind of photography made him explore and look for other ways of combining documentary photography and fine Art.  Through his work he explores the relationship between people and the water.

There is something magical and theatrical about these photographs that made me engaged with the images straight away. Are those photographs shooted at day time or at night time? The light in the pictures is so powerful, it almost feels like if there is a detonation of light in the background and the sky fills with different lights and colour tones as a result, like the Aurora Borealis. This effect it is believed to be achieved by the artist shooting at night with a full moon.

The images shows different people engaged in what they look quotidian jobs and other day-to-day representations. The people despite the effort they appear to be doing seems very relaxed and calm. This makes me question whether those actions are happening at a real time or are copied and repeated at a different time of the day, perhaps at night when everything is filled with silence? There are also photographs of people in which they appeared to be observing the river in a relaxed atmosphere, and makes me want to know more about the artist subject matter.

There is also a dreamlike effect to me in the distorted/blurry elements against the very defined ones, like if the images were just about to disappear and reappear again, quite mysterious actually.

Esteban Pastorino Diaz, Townhall. Gonzales Chaves. From the series “In Salamone”. 2000


Esteban Pastorino Diaz is an Argetinan photographer. In those series of photographs Esteban explores the buildings of the Argentinian architect Francisco Salamone during the 30's and 40's. Pastorino's work is also achieved by shooting at night.

The photographs shows a series of Art Deco buildings like slaughter houses, town halls and cemeteries. By shooting at night the photographer has created a sense of isolation, almost like if the building it is at the spot light to be admire or censured.

The buildings, of a majestic nature, are much like abandoned film sets of a horror film. There is no presence of human beings, which it makes me wonder what happened in those buildings 70 or 60 years ago, what kind of people worked there...

The architectural designs stems a sense of authority with it's big towers, religious sculptures, it is almost like a way of thinking, very strong and inaccessible.

Lizzie Hughes, Second Empire State, Building Piece

A pile of computarized office workers separated by floors in the Second Empire State, are being asked by someone on the phone for their locations within the building. From bottom to top the majority of people that answered the phone sounded hesitant when revealing the information requested however they all revelead their location within the building. I didn't feel terribly impressed by this work. I think the fact that it was an audio and not a visual piece got me a bit lost.  I am perhaps not very good having to imagine something from scratch or maybe I have not gave this piece enough thought and/or appreciation. Either way I still not overly impressed. In this piece I found connotations related to the 11th September 2001 terrorist attack. Why have the artist done this piece? What does she want to represent with it? A scared societity that does what everybody does, nobody stands for nothing anymore? Why any of the workers has questioned this lady on the phone? Does it reflect the "nobody cares" society that we live in?...
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Louise Bourgeois - The Fabric Works 5th Nov 2010 HAUSER & WIRTH London

Conscious and Unconscious, 2008
White oak, glass and stainless steel vitrine
224.8 x 167.6 x 94 cm / 88 1/2 x 66 x 37 in 

Feminine, heartful, emotional, proud, beautiful, honest, powerful...  

Those are some of the fabric works of Louise Bourgeois, there are around 70 pieces of work at the gallery made in the last years of her life. I can't believe how important is what I have in front of my eyes, this is a very important moment for future women artists, I feel confident and inspired. 

Using her own garments of a whole life and household items such as tablecloths, napkins and bed linen she composes beautiful compositions, getting more abstract as the time pass by. They are all displayed in collections arranged by colours, patterns or materials. Some of them form shapes like diamonds or kaleidoscopes, they invite you to get closer to the work, it is almost like a magnetic or a cob web that it is almost trapping you in or making you to get lost in it. 

I can feel a lot of proud in this exhibition, I feel Bourgeois relaxed here like if everything she had to do it was already done,  and what best material than fabrics to conclude a whole life of trying to be heard, Sewing something so feminine it is again in a well-known Art gallery, and that makes me think that things are changing for good. 

Three other pieces are in the gallery, one of her "Maman" spiders, "Peaux de Lapins, Chiffons Ferrailles À Vendre" (2006) and "Conscious and Unconscious"(2008) (see above). The contrast between fabrics and hard materials in those sculptures are confronting me, all of the pieces are highly charged with energy, I will say the sculptures are quite strong and they represent a painful experience for the artist. 

I'm particularly drawn to "Conscious and Unconscious". I feel that both the conscious and the unconscious are both painful to deal for the artist. The conscious shows a blue plastic object which I take this as a representation of the artist's brain with needles stucked on it . The unconscious is formed by white fabric stuffed objects covered with knitted or crocheted white cotton. This again it represents to me the artist brain or brains. The way are displayed one on top of each other it gives the feeling that the unconscious is heavy to handle. It gets heavier and heavier as the objects grows bigger. The unconscious depiction in the work is however stronger and perhaps more meaningful than the conscious. and knowing that the unconscious has always being a starting point for the artist in her work, it doesn't surprised me at all.

Heavy duty

15kg of pushchair, 8kg of daughter, food, toys, cream, nappies, crayons, papers, books, plastic bags, clothes, bibs, sunglasses, dummies, rain cover, cardigans, the monkey, all being pushed by me and my soul all day long around the city.

THE HOUSE OF THE VERNACULAR curated by Martin Parr- Fabrica Oct 2010

The house of vernacular. uhuh...

 I had the chance to see this exhibition yesterday at Fabrica after I run The Artist Parents Group. It was very curious to see Fabrica like this, I wouldn't thought I was in the gallery, every single room was a little gallery, lovely decorated matching with the people in the pictures and their cultures and traditions. I liked all the rooms but in particular it caught my eye and my thought the room with the babies and toddlers photographs. Strange room, very bright with light carpet, and mint or blue pastel walls. It felt like being in a nursery. It was all quiet, no noise, no screaming, no crying, like if someone had frozen all those babies. Weird feeling. They were all possing, not very excactly cute children, they were quite disturbing actually, nothing pretty, but they were babies and I think just for that they should be lovely? I found the room quite chessy actually and also the backgrounds in the pictures.

Brighton Photo Fringe OPEN 2010 / Closer by Stuart Griffiths - Phoenix Oct 2010

 

Brighton Photo Fringe
OPEN 2010 / Closer by Stuart Griffiths.

Another war pictures related theme exhibition, for the last two years there are always pictures showing war images in the Photo Fringe. I'm not sure if I like or respect those kind of pictures because of their fotographic quality or because the vulnerability shown in the image. I liked the scale of the pictures, they made the gallery their own place, it was like if those people in the pictures where telling a story to all of us, the true story of what war means. I'm probably too ignorant to understand war or why people want to fight, but since I have started to seeing war pictures in different exhibitions I'm more aware of the dark side of wars. I find those kind of pictures senseless, it shows a reality a sad one, but nobody can do anything about it. I feel fustrated because of them and feel i can't do anything to help. Is war something boring?? I will give myself another chance and visit another war theme related show to see if I get another impressions.