Gallery
Going, by DAVID COHEN
A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun,
August 2, 2007, under the headline "Ample Room for Argument"
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Gallery
Going, by DAVID COHEN
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A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, |
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A POINT IN SPACE IS A PLACE FOR AN ARGUMENT
The title of the sprawling group show at David Zwirner through August 10, “A point in space is a place for an argument,” is derived from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus, and is about as open to interpretation as that often cryptic thinker’s pronouncements. The very act of quoting Wittgenstein, in fact, identifies the unnamed curators of this show with a heady set of aspirations that characterized the artistic vanguard of the 1960s and ’70s. While there is no obvious connector between the 31 artists on show beyond that fact that all are either highbrows themselves or tend to appeal to highbrows, a pared down element in their work feels linked, somehow, to semiotics, to asking questions about linguistic origins of art. The pervasive feeling of the show is sparse rather than minimalist, with a preference for a rough-at-the-edges reductivism. The abstract paintings and sculptures are what you might call wobbly edged: many explore geometry and simple forms, but with a hand made, rather than industrial feel. In addition to abstract works, there are pieces that entail appropriation. But there, again, forms are worn and weary rather than pristine and manufactured . And there are a number of artists of, or on the border of, the outsider camp. Many of the works have a provisional, or nonchalant, feel, as if they are making a stab at an argument rather than a defiant statement. The first gallery you might enter (the two outer of three large units accommodate the show) gives the impression that the show is literally concerned with marking points in space, with linear works by Al Taylor and Fred Sandback. Taylor’s “Low Rider (Bern)” (1992) has a precarious arrangement of different colored broomsticks protruding from a wall and held in place by wires, while Sandback’s untitled piece from 1999 extends his trademark string, in this case ochre acrylic yarn, from two points high up a wall to a center point on the floor. Bolstering the idea that line and shape are the essence of the show are various other works entailing lines, grids, or circles. A characteristic group of naïve, mystical paintings by Forrest Bess include “Untitled #14” (1951), which places half a dozen short painterly white lines over a thin white circle carved into a black ground. Andre Cadere’s “Barre de bois rond” (1977), an irregular rod consisting of 52 wood segments painted white, yellow, orange, and red, is propped at an angle against a wall. Eva Hesse’s “Test Piece” (1970) is a circular coil made of latex and wire. Complementing the vaguely occult sense of the Bess paintings are works by Alfred Jensen, including “My Oneness, a Universe of Colors” (1957), a diagrammatic, expressively hand-painted arrangement of colorful concentric lines. But equally prevalent are massed shapes and found objects. John Chamberlain, the artist best known for his work compressing components of car wrecks, has an atypically austere piece, “Untitled (couch)” (1980), which consists of a shape of sandy colored foam material bent back on itself and held in place by cord. In a similar vein, Michael Mahalchick’s untitled work of 2006 suspends a heap of fabrics from the ceiling within a loose net. Steven Parrino’s “Skeletal Implosion #3” is a circular wall piece in enamel and gesso on scrunched canvas. Parrino is one of many artists in this show who died before his time — he was killed in a motorcycle accident on New Year’s Eve in 2004 — adding a strange element of doomed youth to this otherwise cerebral and quite playful show. Other artists in this category include Hesse, Taylor and Sandback, prompting the thought that the show is elegaic towards the very idea of linguistic inquiry in art. Among artists who take the show in a very different direction visually is Jason Rhoades, an artist whose installations challenged the division between extremes of scatter and organization (somehow they were about both) who is represented here by a manipulated found object, “Deer Dressed as a Horse, Dressed as a Sheep,” (1983). There is something quaint and anachronistic in thinking that art must involve impoverished materials worked either through radical minimalism or the found object in order to be about its own inner logical structure. Indeed, painterly images worked skillfully within a frame can do this job just as well. The press release echoes the polemics of a bye gone age when it vaunts work in this show that “rejected the authoritarian concept of medium specificity in favor of blurred media boundaries.” The presence here of paintings by Raoul de Keyser show that imagery can be conscious of its own style and precedents as a means of testing its linguistic structure. Representational painters like Luc Tuymans, who also shows with David Zwirner, or Merlin James and Peter Doig, who do not, could have augmented this exhibit while heartily contradicting that kind of exclusionary argument. Three contemporary sculptors in the show add an element of the poignant, crafted image while conforming to the “arte povera” around them: Hans Accola, Vincent Fecteau, and Isa Genzken. Mr. Accola’s “Joy Dog” (2005–07) is put together from woodshop scraps in a playful throwback to the Constructivist aesthetic. Mr. Fecteau’s untitled work from 2003 in papier-maché, burlap, and painted balsa wood is at once dainty and robust; it could be a toy, an architectural model, or a purely abstract exercise in form variation. Ms. Genzken’s three works in concrete on open steel stands from 1988–89, titled in German “Mountain,” “Well,” and “Honeycomb,” eschew the found bric-a-brac for which this artist is best known in favor of the romantic austerity of ruins in a landscape: A poetic interpretation that leaves semiotics well alone. Until August 10 (525 West 19th Street, between 10th Ave and West Street, 212-727-2070).
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