Sculpture

Paintings by Contemporary Artist, Bill Barrett: Humanism & Unbridled Joy

www.artesmagazine.com — Bill Barrett, ‘Pinnacle VI’, 2007, fabricated bronze, 40 x 24 x 22 in. See 9/11 inspiration for this work, below.

Throughout most of his long and distinguished career, Bill Barrett has been considered primarily a sculptor. The title of his 2003 monograph by Philip F. Palmedo, in fact, is Bill Barrett: Evolution of a Sculptor. Yet, a practice common to artists working today is to move back and forth among various mediums, and Barrett’s approach is no exception. The son of a painter who studied under the pioneering cubist Fernand Léger, Barrett watched his father paint in the studio as a child, and he himself explored the medium in his student years. Additionally, many of Barrett’s favorite twentieth century artists, including Arshile Gorky and Willem DeKooning, were painters. So the fact that Barrett would himself shift his main focus from the three-dimensional medium of sculpture to the two-dimensional format of painting is not all that surprising. xxxxxxMore

Santa Barbara Museum of Art: Constructivist László Moholy-Nagy and ‘The Shape of Things to Come’

“The reality of our century is technology: the invention, construction and maintenance of machines. To be a user of machines is to be of the spirit of this century. Machines have replaced the transcendental spiritualism of past eras.” ~ László Moholy-Nagy

Moholy-Nagy was an artist in a time of cultural revolution. He believed that humanity could only defeat the fracturing experience of modernity—only feel whole again—if it harnessed the potential of new technologies. He held that artists should transform into designers, and through specialization and experimentation find the means to answer humanity’s needs. And yet, throughout his career, he continued to fundamentally think of himself as a painter. His interest in qualities of space, time, and light endured as well, transcending the wide range of media he happened to be working in. Whether he was painting, creating “photograms” (photographs made without the use of a camera or negative), or crafting sculptures made of transparent Plexiglass, he was ultimately interested in studying how all these basic elements interacted. xxxxxxMore

Luma Foundation, Arles, France with Tony Oursler: Intermingling Magic, Science, Life

Tony Oursler is a prolific contemporary artist, known internationally for his inventive state-of-the-art combinations of technology, sculpture, and performance. He has been an innovator of new media work since the early 1980s, focusing on video, digital projection and installation. In the last category, he merges the spoken word with other human-produced sounds, including burps, farts, whispers, breathing and sighs, into his sculptural assemblages.

Above: ‘TER3′ (2015) aluminum, acrylic, resin, LCD screens, media players, sound performed by Jinnie Lee 46.75 x 36.5 x 3.5” Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong xxxxx More

Boston’s ‘Pentalum’: Pushing the Boundaries of an Interactive Environment

Like some sort of unworldly mushrooms set on the Lawn on D next to Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston, the ‘Pentalum’ (exhibited on May 28 through 31) consisted of equal parts floating fantasy village, contemporary carnival ride, and pop-up environmental art installation. Though it has been seen by over 2 million visitors in 38 countries, the piece had never before been seen on the U.S. East Coast. The popularity is understandable: ‘Pentalum’ is a public art happening for every age. Based upon the physical integration of color and form, this walk-through experience is a very engaging and delightful serving of the light fantastic. It is just a lot of fun.

Above: An interior view of the ‘Pentalum’ on the Lawn on D in South Boston. Photo: Mark Favermann. xxxxxxMore

Mass MoCA and Anselm Kiefer: Agony’s Chapel

The wreckage is confined as if it were a crime scene display, solitary in a warehouse, awaiting the jury’s visit. This the antechamber to the installation of work by Anselm Kiefer now in place at MASS MoCA for the coming decade. The building on the former factory complex that was converted to house it was once a water storage tank for nearby boilers, and there is a sense of a pool having been drained to reveal these still decaying fragments on the floor, now making their long return to dust.

Above: Anselm Kiefer, Étroits sont les Vaisseaux (Narrow are the Vessels), 2002, concrete, steel, lead and earth, 60 x 960 x 110”. All photos: Arthur Evans. Courtesy Hall Art Foundation © Anselm Kiefer. xxxxxx

Janet Echelman’s Dazzling Aerial Sculpture: for Boston, the Sky’s the Limit

With this one project, Boston has gone from a public art also-ran community to a serious cultural player.

One glimpses a surreal vision when driving out of the Route 93 Tunnel at Boston’s downtown Purchase Street exit: a gigantic but benign jellyfish-like apparition is floating up in the sky. This diaphanous sculptural presence, gently dancing and fluttering in space, seems to be swimming on the wind. Artist Janet Echelman’s public art work, entitled As If It Were Already Here and hosted by the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, is a stunning achievement, an indelible image that manages to seem both ephemeral and permanent. xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: April, 2015

“A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.” ~Robert Henri

Left: Henri Matisse, ‘Seated Woman’ (1935), Private collection

Venus Rising

The planet Venus hangs low in early spring air, gently pulsating in a jewel-toned, cobalt evening sky. A narrow band of deep orange and crimson still grips the horizon behind the distant tree line, reluctant to forfeit another day’s warming trend—harbinger of more sultry days to come. Almost too brilliant to be taken for a celestial form, this spherical object tricks the eye into believing it is an aircraft’s light, suspended in a holding pattern awaiting further instructions. Each night, Venus is joined on a near-collision course by the waxing or waning moon. Yet, the Old Man passes harmlessly and without fail on its course to the other side of the world. All this, in spite of the dim red glow of nearby planet Mars, a playful traffic light in the vastness of galactic space, appearing to signal “Stop!” This spectacle is not only beautiful, but awe-inspiring. One can easily imagine the ancients observing similar events high overhead, as they imparted meaning and message to these mystical planetary migrations. xxxxxxMore

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts: ‘Planes, Trains & Automobiles’

Life sped up during the middle of the 20th Century. It also gained a sense of style. This appealing exhibition of collectors Fred and Jean Sharf’s wonderful collection of a variety of transportation art and objects proves that acceleration and aesthetics make an exhilarating combo.

From an early age, most of us treasure model cars, airplanes and trains. It may have something to do with fantasy, a sense of imagined Lilliputian power or just a love of beautifully made scale models that we can hold in our hands. These may be outmoded generalizations, but most boys adore model trains, cars, trucks and airplanes, while a large majority of girls start out liking doll houses and everything that goes into and outside of them. There is a certain magic to miniaturization.

Above: Deutsche Lufthansa Ju 52 model. Photo: Mark Wallison, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.xxxxxxMore

Metropolitan Museum of Art Speaks Out on Recent ISIS Atrocities

ARTES wishes to add its voice to that of the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P. Campbell, and others, on the destruction of priceless artifacts at Iraq’s Mosul Museum. His statement reads:

Speaking with great sadness on behalf of the Metropolitan, a museum whose collection proudly protects and displays the arts of ancient and Islamic Mesopotamia, we strongly condemn this act of catastrophic destruction to one of the most important museums in the Middle East. The Mosul Museum’s collection covers the entire range of civilization in the region, with outstanding sculptures from royal cities such as Nimrud, Nineveh, and Hatra in northern Iraq. This mindless attack on great art, on history, and on human understanding constitutes a tragic assault not only on the Mosul Museum, but on our universal commitment to use art to unite people and promote human understanding. Such wanton brutality must stop, before all vestiges of the ancient world are obliterated. xxxxxxMore

Elga Wimmer PCC with “Resonance and Memory: The Essence of Landscape”

The exhibition at the New York City gallery, Elga Wimmer PCC, “Resonance and Memory: the Essence of Landscape,” organized by Katharine T. Carter & Associates and curated by Robert Curcio, displays eight distinctive artists whose fresh perspective on landscape reinvigorates the genre by infusing it with issues that span time, real space, digital intervention, and altered observed reality. This diverse show includes paintings, sculpture, digital drawings, photography and glass works by Kathleen Elliot, Sandra Gottlieb, J.J. L’Heureux, John Lyon Paul, Rebeca Calderón Pittman, Gerry Tuten, Gail Watkins and Martin Weinstein.