BEAUY: Installation--David Altmejd

The work of Canadian artist David Altmejd is very difficult to describe. His enigmatic pieces consist of large-scale installations that often involve the idea of a vitrine, or a glass display box. Such boxes are usually used in museum settings to display collections of mineral specimens, or perhaps taxidermied birds. With this sort of "cabinet of curiosities" approach, Altmejd uses natural materials in his installations, but these cabinets are puzzling, offering no logic to a coherent "collection" which is clearly not the point. The cases are often enormous and the objects in them are not... leaving lots of space. The objects can be composed of quartz, pyrite, amethyst, sand, resin, thread, metal wire, pins, needles, synthetic hair, glass eyes,chain, bronze, wood, pinecones, burlap, leather, and foam. It is this juxtaposition of natural, uncontrollable, living elements, placed haphazardly and sometimes with a sense of sweeping movement, against the sterilized plexiglass and mirrored plinths that generates a seeming clash of meaning. It suggests the unpredictability and messiness of life captured and frozen just as it is, in the midst of its drive, life force, heartbeat...

Although some pieces can be small to medium sized like the modernist doll house of The Outside, The Inside and the Praying Mantis (fifth image down), some are staggeringly large like The Index, which he assembled in the Canadian Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Bienale (third image down--click for a larger view). It is obvious that the power of his work lies in experiencing it first hand. I would love to see one of his pieces...

David Altmejd at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City:
http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/david-altmejd/#

"The Maybe" by Tilda Swinton at MoMA

The Gothamist reports:

As if starring in David Bowie music videos wasn't already the coolest, Tilda Swinton has currently taken up residency sleeping at MoMA. It's part of an unannounced, surprise performance piece called "The Maybe" that will be taking place on random days all year. A MoMA source told us, "Museum staff doesn't know she's coming until the day of, but she's here today. She'll be there the whole day. All that's in the box is cushions and a water jug."

"Tilda Swinton will be doing unannounced, random performance art pieces sleeping in a glass box in the museum," the source added. "Today [March 23, 2013] is the first performance. Each performance lasts the whole day the museum is open." Swinton and her box are located near the ticket collectors today, but the box may be in different locations at other performances.

"The Maybe" was first performed in London in 1995 at the Serpentine Gallery; Swinton conceived the performance piece, and asked artist Cornelia Parker to collaborate on the installation. Swinton later re-performed the piece in the Museo Barracco in Rome. Here's what the museum has to say about the piece: "An integral part of The Maybe's incarnation at MoMA in 2013 is that there is no published schedule for its appearance, no artist's statement released, no museum statement beyond this brief context, no public profile or image issued. Those who find it chance upon it for themselves, live and in real—shared—time: now we see it, now we don't."

via The Gotahmist
http://gothamist.com/2013/03/23/photos_tilda_swinton_is_sleeping_in.php

http://www.moma.org/
http://tildaswinton.net/

BEAUTY: Installation--Thilo Frank

The Phoenix is closer than it appears is an interactive installation by German artist Thilo Frank. The only thing in this small room lined with mirrors on every surface, aside from some green lights, is a swing...

Installation view shown at the Museum of Modern Art, in Aalborg, Denmark.

http://www.thilofrank.net

BEAUTY: Installation--Luciana Rondolini

Argentinian artist Luciana Rondolini created a thought-provoking installation piece entitled Tiffany which consists of bejeweled rotting fruit, calling into question ideas of beauty, preciousness, and value.

Equally amusing is her freakishly enormous, melting popsicle, entitled "Cosmic Calamity." Yes, it is real.

http://www.lucianarondolini.com/index.php

"Asylum" by Julian Rosefeldt

Film and video artist Julian Rosefeldt created "Asylum," a nine channel video installation about how immigrants and foreigners are perceived. We watch hypnotized as a variety of ethnic groups go about their mind-numbing Sisyphean jobs, the kind of jobs no one wants to do. The film has the hyper-real, once-removed-from-reality texture that Matthew Barney's films have. People move slowly and deliberately, focused on tasks whose purposes and goals are unknown to us, or often don't make sense to us. It runs fourteen minutes, but please do watch through to the end. It's worth it.

The installation view below shows how the screens are set up.

Julian Rosefeldt at the Max Wigram Gallery:
http://www.maxwigram.com/artists/julian-rosefeldt/

BEAUTY: Mixed Media--David R. Harper

David R. Harper's artist statement says it all:

I am drawn to the form and idea of memorials, those markers that formalize links between memory and present experience. My main fascination is for the ways in which people bring facets of these ritual systems and objects into domestic spaces in order to amplify their personal identification with them, or perhaps with the cultures that support them.

There is intense empathy in the will to memorialize, to lay down a particular meaning on an object that is not inherent to it—life as remembered in the ripe fig of an ancient Xenia painting, or death anticipated in a skull. In my work I am taking account of these empathic tendencies, both in the sense of identification with and understanding of an ‘other’, and in the sense of joining one’s own feelings to an object.

To frame these elements of my work, I refer to certain periods, modes of craft, and domestic embellishment that articulate peculiar links to an ‘ordered’ natural world – the presentation of taxidermy in the home or museum setting, for example. The pleasure of asserting control over what is uncontrollably “wild,” satisfying an urge to have the animal form present in our controlled spaces, reminds us of what we no longer have and no longer are. These eccentric fusions of nature and culture are the uneasy disguises of pathos and pride that allow us to recognize and even celebrate an animal’s mortality while deferring our own.

The figurative connection between nature and mortality is evident in both historical and contemporary environments; the "memento mori" surrounds us in myriad forms at all times. In my lifetime, however, its presence has been more or less sanitized, the natural world euphemized, along with its suggestion of the inevitable. Rather than experiencing our link to mortality, we celebrate our disconnect with the things of which we have no control over.

By creating elaborate objects and situations that combine common and unusual materials and historical techniques, I hope to amplify an ephemeral natural world with enduring monumentalization. I am attempting to engage the viewer in a dialogue on the metaphoric weight that the objects present both historically and emotionally. I have always tried to create work that addresses collective truths while retaining intimacy and reflection; so that the viewer can connect with the objects, and delve into my relationship with them.

As I negotiate my relationship with things like cloth, ceramics, animal hides within the precision of sculptural practices, I am aware that they carry their mix of material histories and social conditions with them. I point to these from my own present position, exalting and commemorating their origins even as I reshape and reposition the same materials to carry specific emotion or meaning. My main work is to narrativize the two, and to not have one story obscure the other.

Above: The Young Lovers

Above: Noblesse Oblige

Above: Biblio I - VI

Above: Better The Devil You Know

http://www.davidrharper.com/

BEAUTY: Mixed Media--Vadis Turner

I love soft sculpture, and the work of New York artist Vadis Turner not only explores the medium it is made of but explores the larger meaning and cultural context of the fabric itself. Fashioned from items (ribbons, antique quilts, vintage clothing and lingerie, vintage bedsheets, handkerchiefs, and vintage gloves) that have connections to femininity, cultural and physical womanhood, dowries, betrothal, marriage, and the commodification of a woman's sex, her work speaks to how ideas and expected behaviors have been imposed on women from, yes I will say it, the patriarchy.

Her abstract wall pieces made from satin ribbons and antique quilts function on their own.

But the aforementioned artist commentary on femininity and feminism is quite apparent in her installation work. Just take a look at her wedding cakes made from lingerie or tampons, a woman's pelvis made from throw-away costume jewelry, and her piece entitled Vanity (My Beautiful Education) in which she cuts up MFA and BFA diplomas to make fake eyelashes, jewelry, and press-on nails.

Top to bottom: Forest Fire; Primrose Path Engulfed In Smoke; Red Mold Melt; Ripe Dirt/ Fresh Burial; Scorch; Best In Show; Bridal Lingerie Cake; Burial Feast (at the Brooklyn Museum Artist's Ball); Pelvis; Tampon Cake; Vanity (My Beautiful Education); Vanity (My Beautiful Education) detail

http://www.vadisturner.com/