Posts By max mulhern

Spart

The international space station should look  like this, the McLaren racing headquarters/factory in Woking, England pictured below. Modelled on a race track the eye glides everywhere with ease. Lines are lost around bends only to reappear from behind us. At the entrance we catch a glimpse of a Tony Cragg  in someone’s office. Then we enter the Elysian Fields of past Formula 1 (F1) car legends that have always embodied the concept of form following function.  They were once  the fastest cars on earth  guided along the outer limits of earthbound speed, vehicles on the verge of becoming sarcophagi, by pilots that sometimes never returned. 

ART LUBE

 “Liquid Modernity” by the Russian artist Andrei Molodkin opened in the spectacular new Orel Art gallery in London last week. Redolent of a wedding ceremony we witnessed a juxtaposition of two different closed circuit energy states corsetted in tubes configured to reproduce two Russian prison cells. Light was wearing her neon chiffon which produced a wonderful  chaud froid effect. The groom’s proboscis was sucking from a 10 gallon drum of  authentic fine Russian crude to top himself off.  A special page-less edition of “Das Kapital” with hollow Vampire typeface half filled with oil served as the Holy book. The walls were ... More » »

The Belly Of The Artist

Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s show “UP DOWN IN OUT” at the Trolley Gallery in London is a welcome addition to the current   crop of artists who are measuring the world using themselves as the yardstick.  Whether it be  Marlene Dumas  spreading her arms to measure the length of her grave or Antti Laitinen digging tunnels or bucking watery currents with a made to measure island or Rebecca Warren tussling with material that is too heavy for her,  artists are physically wrestling with the weight of earthly and human  substance.

The Warren Report

Are you thinking of being a sculptor? Then check out the Rebecca Warren survey at the Serpentine Gallery in London. It borders on the sublime but keeps a foot firmly planted in an interior building site. Many parts are stretched across five rooms but we see no whole. Poise, balance and delicateness and electricity enliven relative material poverty and culminate, sometimes, in a triumphant neon halo. But we aren’t in Paradise even though there is a power to be in awe of here. Who’s in charge the artist or the material?

Anchors aweigh, or, what floats your boat?

Behind our bed is a carved and painted screen depicting a Japanese pavilion on the shores of a golden lake. All is still and ripple-less save for the bow wave of a light bark coming back to shore from an excursion out upon the stillness. Women in kimonos promenade on boardwalks linking a pavilion to another place off-screen. There is a gentle breeze making the supple branches of a lone tree sway. My wife picked it up in a flea market and it enchants me. It is relaxing not only because of the subject but because the execution doesn’t concern ... More » »

Inbox activism–petition to create Secretary of the Arts

artblog contributor Max Mulhern recently wrote us: Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes has suggested that a White House arts advisory be created. His argument is that culture is a vital sector in our society that needs to have its institutions properly coordinated between themselves and the government. He also believes that art can play a role in government. I agree. Many of you have also been circulating emails about the issue. Here’s the link to an online petition begun by Quincy Jones to ask President Obama to appoint a Secretary of the Arts.

Architectural hotbed — report from the Swiss trenches

Post by Max Mulhern Leis Switzerland. This and other photos in this post by Max Mulhern The small idyllic Swiss village of Leis is expanding in the form of two new twin houses designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor of thermal bath fame. They are nearing completion on a steep upward slope behind the village as we go to press. I call them the twin towers so strong is their domination over the low flat houses snuggled together at their feet.  The lower of the two is called the Annalisa House in honor of Zumthor’s wife for whom the house ... More » »

Seeing and Surveillance. (From artist to artists).

Post by Max Mulhern Deborah Stratman, still from In Order Not to be Here, a video about surveillance that showed a year ago at Screening Video Gallery. (All photos by Libby, unless otherwise noted). Is the heightened state of surveillance in our world changing the way we see? I wonder because despite the exponential increase in the channels through which to diffuse art and talk about it my art seems to be increasingly invisible. Do other artists feel this way? Is there a corresponding blindness operating here as well?

Weekly Update — Pageant’s Rag and Bone men and ladies

Bon Jour from Paris!!! This week’s Weekly has my review of Rag and Bnne at Pageant Gallery. Matthew Osborn, untitled drawing at Pageant’s Rag and Bone. Rag and Bone, Pageant Gallery’s Winter Invitational, brings together 26 artists, some of them familiar names and some gallery newcomers.  The exhibition continues Pageant’s shaggy-around-the-edges aesthetic – drawings pinned to the walls; tv monitors sitting on the floor;  sculpture in the gallery’s odd nooks and crannies.  It’s a sprawling show and treasures abound. Matthew Osborn, Financial Oblivion Matthew Osborn‘s wall of cartoon drawings kept me engaged for quite a while.  “Tools are weapons and weapons ... More » »

Richard Serra’s supertankers in London

Post by Max Mulhern Richard Serra at Gagosian in London, installation detail The verb is one of the most powerful tools in a sculptor’s toolbox. Richard Serra once made a list of the verbs describing his actions when sculpting.“To Lift” was one such verb. Once he lifted the edge of a rectangular rubber mat and in one action created volume and contour (and a sculpture). To Roll, To Bend, To Curve and To Cut are other verbs that pop to mind as well although, surprisingly, To Construct doesn’t. To Pose (Juxtapose) and To Balance take its place. Richard Serra, installation ... More » »