Michael Samuels

I nots so recently attempted to go see Michael Samuels' work at the Rokeby Gallery - a small basement venue near Farringdon. Sadly the door was locked - I think i may have hit the tiny space's lunch hour, so I was only able to scrunch my nose up against the window pane. His exhibition entitled "Clusterfuck" contained his most recent work manipulating space, light and everyday objects to create a disorientating environment and viewing experience.

Samuels continues to utilize Formica furniture from the 60’s and 70’s, which is sourced for its distinctive qualities and appearance. Elements such as tabletops, chair legs and drawers are liberated from their traditional role, cut up and reconfigured into structures that no longer have a utilitarian purpose. Through their displacement any functional reading of the elements is disrupted. The structures are often punctured with coloured Perspex or they emanate light, which further extends the physical presence they hold. The coloured rays penetrate the viewers space, offering a playful presence whilst questioning materiality and form; in dislocating and rupturing everyday objects and introducing light elements Samuels heightens the tension between the functional aspect of the object and its immaterial value.

His industrial brightness was appropriate for the stark and somewhat seedy setting. Clearly taking a leaf from Mondrian, his sculptural forms embodied various transitions from past to present, both through history and through use of found dated objects adorned with neon and plastic - A certain comfort was found in their synthetic glow. These window like structures continue to question the viewers perception of depth, presence and absence.
Looking through his old work on his website, miniature scenes (such as an island rock, teepee or lamppost) positioned on everyday objects (such as chairs or tables) equally appealed to me. I had problems finding images up for grabs online, so check out his website.

L.S Lowry

"The Cripples"

gaddam its been a long time. excuse my mediterranean hiatus, I'm going to try to be more consistant. For my own sake. Originally this blog was an attempt to force myself to discover new artists and learn more about them. New aim: write a post twice a week. Hopefully this wont be hard in my new parentally-imposed solitary confinement.
After visiting a friend in Manchester last week and hitting up the galleries and such, I found my vision suffocated with Lawrence Stephen Lowry - the artistic pride straight from Manchester's bosom. Poor Manchester. He and his fame is paraded everywhere - the Lowry Gallery holding a permenant collection, while his work is proudly displayed in the Manchester Gallery, and even lends his names to countless centres, theaters, roads, etc.

"A Riverbank"

Born in November 1887 and dying in February 1976, Lowry was an English artist born in Barrett Street, Stretford, Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict nearby Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury, where he lived and worked for over 40 years. Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of Northern England during the early 20th century. He had a distinctive style of painting and is best known for urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men". He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits, and the secret 'marionette' works (the latter only found after his death).

Street Scene (Southport)

Because of his use of stylised figures and the lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterised as a naïve 'Sunday painter' although this is not the position of the galleries that have organised retrospectives of his works.
Muted pale colours and canvases thriving with somewhat ungrounded figures, Lowry captures the somewhat bleakness of the industrial north and in some instances perhaps the consequences (the cripples). Yet I feel detached, these images seem to come out of a children's book, and are thus unrelatable, yet Lowry was know for attempting to capture throngs of people in an attempt to portray human plight and society. I think i take the view of his work appearing niave, yet it hard to call dark and ominous industrialization and cripples a niave subject.

Alex Katz

"Anna Wintour" 2009

An american artist primary associated with the pop art movement, Alex Katz is a figural american artist with a recent installation at the National Portrait gallery. Described as "fresh and flat", Katz obsesses over surface details such as hats, sunglasses and hair. stylized, superficial, painting the high end bohemian whirl of society- I'm not convinced. His work was dull and conveyed nothing. A work in the National Portrait Gallery show, called One Flight Up (1968) consists of 31 portraits on aluminium, cut out and mounted together. The effect of looking at it is of stepping into a New York party. When Katz was painting it he felt, he says, “like a casting director” trying to work out who would fit into the scene. Influenced by Ukiyo-e japanese prints aiming to show the present world, he succeeds in portraying the latter half of the 20th century as baseless and frivolous with no substance. Maybe this is a nod to the social circle he was a part of. Commenting on a portrait of Anna Wintour created for the exhibit, he claims he had been friends with her a long time - 20 or so years - yet was only compelled to paint her after her rise to fame and fortune - this kind of disgusts me.

"One Flight Up" 1968

The Serpentine: Nairy Baghramian and Phyllida Barlow

Phyllida Barlow 2010


Nairy Braghramian - "Klassentreffen" (Class Reunion), 2008

Last week or so I visited the Serpentine in hopes to see the work of two female contemporary Sculptors. I find the Serpentine can have pretty hit or miss exhibitions- this one I am still on the fence about. FirsT, i found it pretty difficult to distinguish the two Artists' work. The gallery claimed the work was set up to "interact" with the other artist's pieces, which was total bullshit - each artist had a couple of rooms in the gallery, with only the entrance area combining their work. The serpentine gave vague descriptions and aims of the artists. "The exhibition will offer a new perspective on these two artists, who, though strikingly different in their approach, each examine questions related to the context in which their works are shown, while addressing the art-historical debate on the politics of form." Admittedly they both created abstract forms on varying scale addressing space and form, yet what sculpture doesn't in this age?
Nairy Baghramian is a Berlin-based artist known for her sculptural installations and photographs. Her work encompasses questions of context, institutional framing and the production and reception of contemporary art. Key to Baghramian’s work is how theoretical concepts, drawn from art historical debates around Minimalism, literature and design history, are translated into specific decisions about materiality, manufacture and display. - I found her work pretty dull and overdone. Plastic mold forms that often went unnoticed due to their small scale and positioning in corners, while her other featherweight spindle forms failed to impress.
Phyllida Barlow is an English artist practicing since the 1960s. Her sculptural installations are characterised by their large scale, often made quickly in the same place that they are to be shown and with materials that are subsequently recycled for future use. Their rough appearance conveys the urgency with which they are produced. Her work felt raw, worked and emotive, with effort put into them unlike Nairy's work. scale, texture, malleability, variety of materials with their original form still clear, protruding into the viewers space - all these things turned me on. Although after investigating her further online, I was a little disappointed in the selection of work she constructed, considering some of her previous works which looked fanatastic, and I also failed to find pictures of the work I liked the best in the exhibit. Fail.. Guess which artist I preferred.

Yinka Shonibare

what a blog hiatus. newest post in on the above who I noticed in timeout London the other day and was peeved by the familiarity of that particular name. Now i remember seeing his awesome work at the turner prize exhibition several years ago in 2004.
Shonibare has become well known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. His work explores these issues, alongside those of race and class, through the media of painting, sculpture, photography and, more recently, film and performance. He examines in particular the construction of identity and tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories. Mining Western art history and literature, he asks what constitutes our collective contemporary identity today. Having described himself as a ‘post-colonial’ hybrid, Shonibare questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions. He uses fantastic african prints on dutch cotton that he buys in Brixton, London. He is currently responsible for the 4th plinth in Trafalgar square.

The Circumcision

Circumcision - Parmigianino
c. 1523-1524
Oil on Panel

Chris Ofili

The Holy Virgin Mary - 1996

The Upper Room - 1999-2002

Pimpin' Ain't Easy - 1997

So while at home i went to the Chris Ofili exhibition at the Tate Britain. He is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad. I'm having a hard time forming an opinion on his work. not that any of the other posts so far have really addressed my personal opinion.
Ofili, who is of Nigerian descent, studied cave paintings there which had some effect on his style. He sometimes applies Elephant dung directly to the canvas in the form of dried spherical lumps, and sometimes, in the same form, uses it as foot-like supports on which the paintings stand. He claims that by propping the work up with the dung, he resonates the connection of the work with earth and the ground that they come from, while denying traditional forms of artwork display. Ofili's painting also reference blaxploitation films and gangsta rap, seeking to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. His work is often built up in layers of paint, resin, glitter, dung (mainly elephant) and other materials to create a collage.
Up close his work is quite interesting. One can really see the forms layering and stages of the painting, while significant details seem lost in the grand scheme of the works. The images verge on crude, with cut outs of pornographic images of black women pasted to the canvas, while the overall images encompass black stereotypes while employing bright colours and patterns. His works bridge the gap between the sacred and profane, and he is constantly tying to rework the concept of what defines beauty, art and profane. his earlier work is amusing, the elephant dung innovative, while specifically addressing personal issues. Also one must always chuckle at titles such as "the adoration of captain shit and the legendary black stars" or "pimpin ain't easy" - depicting a giant phallus with a clown head. His later work shows care towards religious themes, as shown through the upper room - a large wooden room constructed within the Tate displaying 12 monkeys facing towards a large monkey, each in a different colour scheme drawing from both Hindu and christian last supper imagery. He really pulls out the stops to make the experience of the viewer sacred and intimate, the entry to the room through a dark echoing passage along with the room itself do possess a certain religious fervor atmosphere one experiences in a church or other holy places.
Later in his career he abandoned the elephant dung and somewhat simple themes to explore more through painting as he moved to Trinidad. His later work i found to be not anything outstanding, although his exuberant colour palette, clearly influenced by his life in Trinidad, is exciting to experience. I suppose I liked his room of watercolours and drawings, symmetrical intricacies made up of tiny heads of afroed men and women.