Radical Women: Betye Saar

Through the diorama-like boxes of assemblages, Betye Saar narrates stories of the past and sets forth hopes for the future with found objects and images. The past is the history of the found objects as well as Saar’s own experiences; the future is marked by her exploration of spirituality and the opposition for stereotypical depictions of race and identity. The connection can be seen in many of Saar’s works. 

Black Girl's Window, 1969.

The 1969 assemblage, Black Girl’s Window, consists of a salvaged wooden frame filled with nine small pictures depicting motifs like lion or skeleton. Below, a silhouette of a black girl peers out of the curtain, surrounded by symbols of stars. This early work marks Saar’s transition from printmaking to collage and assemblage; she took inspiration from artists like Simon Rodia and Joseph Cornell, who also made art with found objects and images. In addition to being an autobiographical work, the mythical symbols of fate in Black Girl’s Window serve as Saar’s aspiration for freedom and creativity and resistance towards the one-drop rule.

The liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972.

Similarily, Saar’s 1972 work, Liberation of Aunt Jemima, showcases both the black heritage and the hope for black women to break away from stereotypes. The assemblage displays a black mammy laborer figure in front of a collage of Aunt Jemima’s headshots. While holding a broom, wearing an apron, and a headscarf, the figure is equipped with a rifle and a grenade. Although Aunt Jemima is known for her caring and motherly character shared by many African American women, Saar expects there to be more diverse portrayals of African American women, rather than only a mammy figure.

Connecting past histories and future hopes with her assemblages, Betye Saar expresses powerful messages that Women and African-Americans are strong, powerful, and in control of their own lives.

Josh Kline at 47 Canal

Josh Kline uses his sculptural works to point out the problems in modern American society. His works are represented by 47 Canal and often reflected upon the social issues and political climate in America. His recent on-going series Reality Television (2019-) consisted of United States flags collaged and molded into a flatscreen television and being mounted on the wall. This series informed the audience of the divisiveness of media in the United States’ political climate. The bright contrast of red and white, along with the stars, screamed patriotism but in a negative way as flags were covered in dirt or paint. Reality Television reflected the upcoming presidential election where the debates were broadcasted throughout the nation, while reporters exaggerated stories based on their political agenda. From an outsider view, every presidential election would seem like a reality television show, dramatic yet problematic.

As part of Josh Kline’s Unemployment exhibition at 47 Canal, Desperation Dilation (2016) is a response to the decline of human labor needed in the workforce as automation and robots replaced the need of human staff. The artwork is contained in a supermarket shopping cart, filled with flesh-toned silicone shaped into recycling materials. At first glance, it could be mistaken as human limbs which could spark interest for the audience to view this work. Kline’s works also tackled the issues faced by minimum-wage workers, be it in the supermarket or in the recycling industry. As we know, recycling was expensive and did not lead to much success in America. However, as consumers, we seldom acknowledged the effectiveness of recycling and continued to fill our carts with “recyclable” materials. By using materials from daily life, it showed how easily we could slipped away from these problems and in return acted as a self-reflection for everyone to be aware and perhaps change the society for the better.

Josh Kline
Reality Television 9 (2019)
Nylon flags, dirt, polyurethane, epoxy, microfiber, mounting device

Josh Kline
Desperation Dilation (2016)
Cast sculptures in silicon, shopping cart, polyethylene bags, rubber, plexiglass, LEDs, and power source

Harold Ancart: Pools

Harold Ancart: Pools at  David Zwirner gallery presents a series of concrete relief forms derived from the structures of a swimming pool. When Ancart began this body of work he noticed that in New York, people didn’t have swimming pools because of the cost and the lack of space. Ancart created these pools as smaller entities in which there is no particular function which is ironic in the sense that many people who are owners of a pool barely step foot in it. 

Ancart’s three dimensional works are an exploration of color and form, reminiscent of how Josef Albers investigated color relationships using geometric shapes. Albers discovered how the perception of a color can change in relation to the colors surrounding it, and this is evident in Ancart’s sculptural forms. Untitled (2020) depicts a three dimensional rectangle that has a smaller shape embedded within it. There are stairs located on the left side of that shape.The outer surface of the shape is orange while the inner shape is blue, the stairs are a lighter shade of turquoise. Given that orange and blue are complements of one another they create a sense of brightness. In Untitled (2020), the orange color appears to have a higher intensity than the lighter blue color. Also the orange color appears to bleed into the shade of turquoise. In another piece Ancart mixed red and white to create pink. The blue color appears more greyish alongside a pink color that has a light intensity. The color of the staircase which is a light pink, appears to be receding. My perception of these colors is biased because how I perceive color may be different from another individual who is looking at the same piece.  

Platform: New York by David Zwirner

Platform: New York

David Zwirner

Due to the COVID19 quarantine, all galleries across Manhattan and Brooklyn have been mandatorily shut down, and while this may feel like the end of any ability to see art work outside of quick social media platforms, there have been developing opportunities to allow viewers abiding to stay-at-home orders to view gallery's showcasing artists. David Zwirner has developed a website, tilted Platform: New York, that gives showrooms across the gallery and museum belts in New York City access to showcase artists on display. The hosting website takes in accord not only images of works, but includes brief information on the artist, descriptions of each work, and an image of the curated space.

While it is obvious that a gallery’s function may be hindered through a website, there being no movement or interaction with the works, Platform is an initiative that allows viewers to continue learning of new artists and develop inspiration and thought. 

Traveling through the website is smooth, providing us with a comprehensible simulation of a showroom by an array of artists. A particularly interesting collection of work, from Elijah Wheat Showroom, is that of the artist Zsofia Keresztz. Keresztz’s practice consists of mosaic sculptures of abstracted spider webs embedded with human-like forms. To be able to view Keresztz’s work, and to see the sculptures exist in a space, is something I may have taken for granted before but I am pleased to be able to access the experience from home, along with the work of every artist included.

Maximillian Schubert - Doubles

Doubles
Maximillian Schubert
Off Paradise
120 Walker St, New York, NY 10013

Maximillian Schubert uses casting and mold making, and altered found objects to create sculptures and paintings that blur the boundary between real and recreated objects. Various sized stretched raw linen canvases line the space, each with particular folds and cracks and holes splitting the rectangles. But the linen is not linen, rather it is a molded double of a linen canvas, textured and broken apart, then reassembled and hung. The work Untitled (fracture), when seen from the front reads as poorly stretched linen, the points of fracture question whether these are painted on or real. When viewed from the side the artist does not attempt to hide the lines of adhesive where seams are pieced together.  The frame is a shell of picture, the canvas has molted like a snake shedding its skin, leaving behind something that only reminds you of what once was. 

In the middle of the room is Stations, a propane tank fit with aluminum tubing that has been bent and punctured in various spots. The gas is lit where the tubing has been punctured, creating minuscule flames spitting out and illuminating the otherwise invisible gas. The flames reflect the points of fracture in the wall works with a highlighted point of light rather than a void of black. The works are neither broken nor whole, but exist in-between states of absence and actuality.  

Agnes Denes, Absolutes and Intermediates, The Shed

Seeing Agnes Denes’ show at The Shed was an extraordinarily unique experience. It is one that I have thought back to often whenever I am feeling particularly lonely or desperate in this time.  Walking around her spaces made me think: does everyone who sees her art feel like they are inventing something entirely new? Her work feels like something that I understand inherently, if only because I’ve seen it echoed a million times in art that has come after. Careful diagrams and mathematical equations are abound in the art world, yet none feels so extraordinary and so careful as hers. 

Beyond that, her ecological pieces astound. Whenever she brings her work into the world around us - whether it be her wheat field or the planting of trees, or something so simple as a small bowl of bones - I felt a little closer to humanity, more attuned to the human condition.

I’ve never assumed myself to be technically or mathematically minded. Yet there was a place for me, as there is for everyone among the carefully displayed numbers. The moments of feeling alienated were few and far between, and mostly occurred when I did not understand how a piece fit into her collection. This happened most intensely in two places - her divergence into neon and hologram, and the actualization of her drawings in the downstairs space. Both felt unnecessary and, by extension, unnerving.

However, the show as a whole was distinctly fluid. Each piece fit perfectly together, and even the parts that I named as not fitting in were, in retrospect, simply a part of Denes’ journey. That is what struck me so fully: the sense of everything having its place in her collection. I fully believe that she is one of the greatest artists of our modern age.

Radical Women: Betye Saar Working My Mojo

Listening to Betye Saar speaks about “ my job is to keep the vessel open so that the spirit can move through me and make the sounds it wants you to hear” and pondering of her identity as African- American, after The Liberation of Aunt Jemima(1972) her later works seems turn the political statements of Civil Rights to the resistance of White domain culture that Building the confidence of her identity  

During the time of Civil Rights and Black Panther movements, Saar turns the theme of her work from astrological symbols such as tarot cards and Cranial anthroposcopy to politics. She notes she got the motivation ” because of strong feelings that happened with that movement. ” With the hoppy of collecting mundane life objects of folk culture, she found the Aunt Jemima as a transformed symbol to carry the message of insurrection. As Hellen Molesworth said, “Aunt Jemima’s face no longer reads as subservient”. Also, Marci Kwon notes “assemblage artists tended to dumpster dive, using the leftovers of commodity culture.” From the Jim Crow era until Saar’s time, colored people suffer from discrimination in public and The image of African American on commodities are manipulated stereotypes that obey to the Whites. The consciousness of civil rights leads Saar to explore the confidence in historical African culture. She assembles astrological symbols, esoterica, the occult, and mysticism images.“You call to the ancestors and say, ‘I need your spirit and energy right now to get through this.’” as Bryant speaks. With the help of gathering the power of spirit link and historical sharing memories, Saar succeed in making African Americans, her true audiences to feel proud of their identity. 

Through putting African Americans’ images in major museums, ultimately Saar spells her Mojo by the works which erect a heroic flag to light on the future of racial struggles in the art world.

David Zwirner: James Welling “Pathological Color”

Goethe’s suggestive concept of “pathological color”, states that people of refinement avoid vivid colors in the objects around them and seem inclined to banish vivid colors from their presence altogether. It was refreshing to see James Welling’s embrace of color, in his exhibition of photographic works titled “Pathological Color.” Some of his images leads you towards a psychedelic drug induced mind set such as “Morgan Great Hall”, while others provide you with a stimulating sense of calm, as seen in “0696.” Welling likes to manipulate through layers in his pictures and focuses on the psychological effects that color has on a person. He notes that his “aim was to show seeing.”

What makes the absence of color “refined?” Is refinement a visual language delegated to a specific type of person? Welling’s famous project was photographing Philip Johnson’s Glass House over several years and seasons in the late 2000s, physically holding colored filters in front of his camera lens. The glass house itself being an ultimate test in refinement, Welling presented a powerful inquiry in his physical attempt to place color on the home. The result was an alteration and enhancement of an already striking piece of architecture, giving refinement a new definition.

In many of Welling’s images, he presents to us multiple surfaces and superimposes dancers with landscapes, architecture and sculptures, ultimately making a final scene that attempts to recreate the human sensorium.

Radical Women: Eva Hesse

In these tragic times, I was grateful to have listened to Eva Hesse speak about art and absurdity. “Hesse’s life story was marbled by tragedy.” Starting at a young age, she tried to escape the Nazi regime in 1938. The artist has lived through many deaths in her family, including her mother’s suicide when she was 10. Her art career lasted only 10 years, after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In the interview, when Hesse tries to speak about her work, she avoids speaking about it directly. She’s more interested in noting the need for her to make, and the absurdity in that need. “My whole life has been absurd. Nothing ever was normal. [she chuckles] The extreme traumas—personal, health, family, war, economy, health, sickness, to my art and my working there, school, my personal, friends— That’s just in life. Then in art, it can’t be separated for me, because my life was so extreme. Art being the most important thing for me, rather than like existence, staying alive. And I could never really separate them. And they became close, enmeshed. And absurdity is the key word.”

Hesse’s work is admired all over the world. Similar to Mary Weatherford, her work was something that I copied as a young art student. Hesse’s sculptures were generous in that way, not hard to figure out how it was made. However, it is the essence of the work that can’t be replicated. Her sculptures came from a sincere place, an emotive space that only she can conjure up. Molesworth note that a part of what makes Hesse work so extraordinary is that the art, even though made in the face of her tragic life was never sentimental or hysterical. The work was absurd in its formal conversation and in its gentle demeanor. Hesse’s art has infinite opportunities for interpretation. She was clear about her desire to make something that was truly hers and find her own inner peace amongst the inner turmoil. She knew her work was powerful and didn’t feel the need to find the exact words for it.