Ingrid Cincala-Gilbert of Cincala Art is an art consultancy based in New York. The blog page represents a selection of noteworthy shows that may be of interest to collectors and artists.
Exhibition Image, Ad Reinhardt, David Zwirner, New York
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
Curator Robert Storr has put together an impressive exhibition that combines, in two separate rooms at Zwirner, Ad Reinhardt's drawings, cartoons and photographic slides with his spare, minimalist "ultimate" black paintings.
The room with Reinhardt's 5' square black paintings is particularly powerful, allowing the works to be read as a collective but also, close-up, to be read against one another, revealing the subtleties and differences of each individual piece.
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Exhibition Image, Rosemarie Trockel, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
This fascinating exhibition at Gladstone Gallery showcases new work by Rosemarie Trockel. On view are a series of new wool paintings and wall sculptures by the artist. Hung salon style, the exhibition shows her continued use of wool fabric along with wall sculptures made of acrystal, Perspex, and acrylic paint. The exhibition runs through December 21 and is a must see.
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Exhibition Image, Jacob Kassay-IJK, 303 Gallery, New York
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
Kassay’s new body of work at 303 Gallery combines a set of irregular wall paintings, defined by stretchers built from remnants of previous work, with a series of small glass sculptures. The wall paintings invite the viewer to question the relationship between the canvas and its topical surface. In contrast, the crystal wedges, temporarily inserted into library books, provide a more active, transformative and complex dialogue between art and context. Kassy’s work is on view through December 20.
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From left to right: Curator, Donna De Salvo and John Currin beneath Skinny Woman, 1992 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York); Nude on a Table, 2001 (The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago); Heartless, 1997 (Private Collection, New York); and Rachel in Fur, 2002 (Private Collection).
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
Last night, in the ninth Annenberg lecture series, John Currin spoke to the Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Donna De Salvo. It was a full house–an audience eager to listen and laugh with the artist. Topics ranged from Currin’s early works (abstraction in the NY Style of painting) to his leap to figuration and portraiture.
As the discussion moved along from one painting to the next, the artist’s masterful technique of creating portraits was explained as a vehicle for painting. Currin’s work expresses forms that sustain a static and passive quality that can be deemed as beautiful, but that description often belies a deeper lyrical and emotional subtext.
Currin spoke of his inspirations being culled from extremes, ranging from glimpses of 16th and 17th century Northern European paintings to images from contemporary advertising and online sources. His love of the German expressionists Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Ernst Kirchner are often referenced.
John Currin New Paintings is currently on view at Gagosian Gallery, Paris, through December 21, 2013.
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Exhibition Image, Tàpies. Lo sguardo dell’ artista” (The eye of the artist)
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
One of the most breathtaking and well-conceived exhibitions at the Venice Biennale this year was Tàpies. The Eye of the Artist, at Palazzo Fortuny.
Curators Daniela Ferretti, Natasha Hébert, Toni Tàpies and Axel Vervoordt present an array of Tàpies' works intermingled with works from the artist's own collection and private home, including Picasso, Miró, Kline, Shiraga, Pollock and others. This exposition and, in some cases, juxtaposition, offers a rare glimplse into some of what inspired this amazing Spanish artist.
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Exhibition Image, Ai Weiwei, Bang, the German contribution to the French pavilion, Venice
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty, France and Germany agreed to exchange pavilions at this year’s Venice Biennial.
Ai Weiwei’s Bang, is the German contribution to the French Pavilion. This poetic installation, curated by Susanne Gaensheimer, brings together 866 uniquely designed three-legged stools. The suspended and intertwined objects hover above and allow passage within, creating a magical mobile-like vision, but it is the recognition of the uniqueness of each single stool that connects to the artist’s Chinese heritage and China’s history.
Exhibition Image, Anri Sala, Ravel Ravel Unravel, the French contribution to the German pavilion, Venice
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
The work of the French artist Anri Sala is France’s contribution to the German Pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennial. Unveiled here is Sala’s Ravel Ravel Unravel 2013, a work that shares itself by fully-engaging all senses through light, sound, music and word play.
Playing with the words ‘ravel’ and ‘unravel’ (an expression of continuous movement), Sala heightens the meaning by using the music of the composer Maurice Ravel, who, in 1930, created a score that was to be performed by use of only the left hand. In Sala’s work, two films simultaneously show two contemporary pianists (independently) playing Ravel’s score, each interpretation unique—resulting in an experience that brilliantly pronounced both similarities and differences. In adjacent rooms, the drama plateaued once again with films showing a DJ mixing the two scores. Here the ‘unravel’ of ravel is illustrated to a tee.
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Exhibition Image, Rudolf Stingel at Palazzo Grassi, Venice
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
Rudolf Stingel at the Palazzo Grassi is an extraordinary exhibition that features for the first time ever at this institution the work of a single artist. It is also the artist’s largest monographic exhibition in Europe to date and presents a selection of over thirty paintings from both private and public collections around the world.
Utilizing all three floors of the palazzo, Stingel covers well over 50,000 square feet in a patterned carpet. Walls and floors are equally blanketed, creating a contemplative environment off of which Stingel’s masterful paintings play.
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Exhibition Image, Amor Fati
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
A thoughtful and inspired show curated by Anna Erickson and Wills Baker, Amor Fati is a group exhibition bringing together a diverse set of work from artists David Armstrong, Maxime Ballesteros, Benjamin Degen, Zhivago Duncan, Richard Dupont, Martin Eder, Eloise Fornieles, Douglas Gordan, Loris Gréaud, Nir Hod, Michael Joo, Kika Karadi, John Miserendino, Yoko Ono, Angel Otero, Nicolas Provost, Matthew Stone, Stephen Tashijan, Mickalene Thomas, Andy Warhol, Graham Wilson, and Nick van Woert. The show opened September 11th and runs through September 29th at Dustin Yellin’s Pioneer Works Center in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
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Orly Genger, Red, Yellow, Blue, 2013
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
Orly Genger’s Red, Yellow, Blue is the artist’s largest project to date. The work is composed of more than a million feet of crocheted lobster fishing rope and divided into three snake-like mounds of red, yellow and blue. Set within Madison Square Park, the piece has an overall melodic and light quality that runs counter to the industrial material used, and to the broader urban setting.
Orly Genger’s Red, Yellow, Blue is on view at Madison Square Park in New York through Sept 8, 2013 after which it travels to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside of Boston.
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Robert Irwin, Scrim Veil--Black Rectangle--Natural Light, 1977.
Photo Credit: Cincala Art Advisory
Robert Irwin's Scrim Veil--Black Rectangle--Natural Light, part of the Whitney’s collection and on view until September 1, felt to me as relevant today as it must have in 1977 when it first debuted at the Whitney.
The piece is beautiful in its simplicity and stripped-down minimalism, simultaneously highlighting the power of Marcel Breuer’s brutalist architecture while providing an experience too often missing from the contemporary art gallery, namely that of art interacting with natural light.
Scrim Veil functions successfully on many levels. The work functions at once as backdrop and object, splitting the large room on Whitney’s fourth floor in two, allowing passage beneath it (but not without the effort of bending) and both obscuring (and revealing) Breuer’s iconic fourth floor window. The artwork takes on its most magical quality when the space is activated. In the quiet, mystical light, the audience engages freely with the shadows of the space--a choreography without pre-defined goal. As I walked through the space I was reminded of Merce Cunningham’s philosophy in dance. His utilization of chance theory followed no particular narrative. Instead, the choreography acted as a set of parameters supporting the creativity or spontaneity of the resulting dance.
This is what is engaging about Irwin’s work: the space that the viewer is given simply to experience the work on his or her own terms, and the recognition that this experience itself is what most enriches the work.
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