Sometimes Roberta and I joke about who we’d put together in a show. Between my last post and first Friday, I’ve been thinking about this little group:
Multiple contributors to Staring Therapy, an installation at Space 1026.
At the Staring Therapy exhibition we saw at Space 1026 Friday, Toronto artists Victoria Kent, Seth Scriver, and Sandy Plotnikoff displayed works they gathered by sending out a pre-recorded phone message to friends and contacts around the globe. People responded with small artworks and found objects, which formed an installation to be viewed through specially decorated Staring Tubes.
The pedestal-top arrangements of kitsch, tschotschkas and bricollage at Space 1026 Friday had me channeling Isa Genzken.
Genzken is a well-known artist on the international scene. We first became familiar with her work at the last Carniegie International. Then curator Carlos Basualdo included a piece of hers in the first Notations exhibition, Energy Yes! at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006 (our post here). We also learned that she was in her 50s.
Her work bears a striking resemblance to assemblage work with plastic figures, dolls and other materials created by a woman well her senior–Mildred Elfman Greenberg, who created assemblages atop specially built pedestals in the 1980s and ’90s (see previous post).
Mildred Elfman Greenberg, Quartet: Ice Age to Space Age, III, 1990-91, toy animals, statue of liberty, palm tree, lion skull, glass, red gravel; all placed within or on top of two Plexiglas boxes set on a black Plexiglas base, 21 1/4 x 10 1/2 x 5 inches.
Greenberg’s constructions are cosmic and accessible. They pack quite a punch, and look as fresh and quirky as either of the art works above.
I say, let’s put ’em all together in one exhibit.
If you read Martin Bromirski’s comments and followed his links, you’ll know he called the Genzken/Greenberg relationship in February (his post on anaba).
