sean slemon | implicit art

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23 July 2006 by sean slemon

Thomas! We Demand something new.

With his own brand of printed wallpaper (the pattern extracted from one of his photographs), Thomas Demand darkened the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens in London this summer. Each room a busy dark hue of green interfering with your vision in the same way that a chain link fence does: making us struggle to see the actual artwork. His intention was supposedly to make us aware of the domestic scale of the Gallery.His show consisted of large scale, slickly produced Plexiglas laminated photographs of “Life size sculptures painstakingly made by him” (Shame!) .Using rudimentary materials like paper and cardboard, he constructs banal scenes like a window surrounded by ivy, A kitchen, a photocopy shop, you get the drift right?

He has been working in this way since he left Goldsmiths in the early 90’s and has yet to find something new, rather choosing to attempt to refine the way of working and his idea.
The scenes are of course devoid of human presence and are crafted as accurately as possible. An image of a dead plant looks life like from a distance, but is revealed to be fake and constructed upon closer inspection. This show, and his work is really just a refined version of a concept that was better and more impressively produced ( and allowed to run its course) by Fischli and Weiss. The pair produced woodcarvings and Styrofoam sculptures of similar scenes and human scenarios, having since moved onto other methods of production and so, other ideas.
Demand has just reduced the same concept first to cardboard, and then to a photograph. Beyond the initial surprise of realising that what your looking at is constructed and not real, there is not much else to hold your attention, when it is really just an idea we have seen before, reduced to a large reflective photographic surface. Maybe it is more designed for the contemporary kind of travelling show, along with the need to edition, sell and adapt to the commercial museum and exhibition culture and the public’s constant need for exhibits.

How I wish for something new. The Serpentine Gallery is not one to give much away on their website.

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14 July 2006 by nathaniel

V/A (various art)

Been doing filler (mostly my own stuff) for the past while on the blog, whilst on residence in Brazil, and not getting out much since going gaga over my daughter. Hit the gallery strip two days ago, tho, and as usual was pleased by the works at Warren Siebrits – with the exception of the young, up-and-coming Colbert Mashile, the works were a bit steep in price, but that’s what you pay for in the Siebrits space, I gather; he does the work of finding great work. Colbert is also, obviously, a guy to watch. Not that impressed with Cecil Skotnes @ Goodman, but it is what it is – emotive paintings and prints, from an old master… Just not my vibe. The Krut group show of works is really worth seeing, and the pieces are really affordable for those who want to start collecting going-places (or already there) artists (I actually bought a Slemon piece for myself). Note that this is not a self-plug – my prints on show are not for sale….

Also currently on in Gauteng:
Dorothee Kreutzfeldt @ Outlet, and (oh shit, nathaniel just realized he deleted the shows he had intended on blogging from his inbox), and some other stuff at some other galleries, I am sure. Maybe look at m&g or art.co.za or Artthrob listings or something. I’m tired.

Oh yeh, and my opening at Parking Gallery went live last night (up for three days by appointment). Here’s a great photo by Christo Doherty (followed by a few others on my crap phone). Doherty says, "the image of woody allen came out rather like a francis bacon portrait – i quite liked that. he was also an artist challenged by the problems of communication and the corporal body…."

^{vincent @ parking gallery, a photo by Christo Doherty}

^{simon gush (parking gallery curator) and clive kellner (johannesburg art museum curator). the latter says the former is a great gallerist, and that i could quote him on that. after he said i should not blog about him spilling coca-cola everywhere, that is….}

^{rat western and her bright nose in my terrible photos say, "it’s nice to see your crap"}

PS – my daughter has a new site, if interested
PPS – about to post my first guest blog at Art Heat

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12 July 2006 by nathaniel

the storytellers @ the johannesburg art museum

the storytellers:
works from the non-aggressive narrative

So, more than a year and a half after the fact (and thanks to Sean Slemon, who insisted on lo-res versions of all my prints before deciding on a trade for his sculpture), I finally uploaded a photoset of my first major solo show to flickr. Check out images of the space, peops and work in the storytellers photoset (with thanks to Christo Doherty, Abrie Fourie and Franci Cronje for the pics. Also a thanks to the late and great Andrew Meintjes, for all his help and support). You can also read about the exhibition via my site here, or from a review in Art South Africa here.

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20 June 2006 by sean slemon

Solid Light opens at David Krut Arts Resource

Solid Light
by Sean Slemon at David Krut Arts Resource
opens on 22 June at 18:00 @ 140 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood.

Lightness and Being
by nathaniel stern

Sean Slemon’s latest body of work strikes an almost sublime balance between the frivolous, and the momentous. Both a departure from, and continuation of, his last series – which saw three Gauteng solo shows, and won him the Sasol New Signatures award in 2005 – it accents the absurdity, and necessity, of space.

In an informal chat with Slemon while browsing through images of his work, we talked about how architecture is really just a carving out, a framing, of Nothing. His pieces literally draw out this relationship.

Slemon follows beams of light from a windowpane to the floor, and builds solid-but-transient structures of string around them. There’s a witty lightness – literally and metaphorically – to these constructions, which have to make you smile. They are performances within performances, ephemeral arrangements that play off the daily magic of the setting sun. The impossibility of the light’s refractions and distortions, played up by occasional twists or turns in the string, is almost surreal. Slemon simultaneously extrudes, maps and warps light and space, curiously, rather than forcefully.

But there’s also an incredible weight to the questions these installations implicitly ask. What would the world be like if we could build a home out of light and shadow? What would it mean to Soweto, to New Orleans? Conversely, Slemon highlights the commoditization of Nothing, the sociopolitical questions around finance and ownership. Who gets to build, sell or live inside?

In another of Slemon’s works, he gained legal permission from the Chief of Forestry
at New York City’s Parks and Recreation Department to down several dead street trees, throughout the island of Manhattan. The hassle of obtaining a permit and finally securing the trees, from what it sounds like, was a comedy of bureaucratic errors worthy of Telkom-like performance art on its own. The plan from here is to splice these trees in half and install a sculptural forest within the confines of a public foyer. Again, Slemon interrogates notions of inside/outside, growth and light, but with a nuanced allusion to death and the cityscape. The genius is in its simplicity, and how comfortable windows and trees make us feel, even in a restricted space.

For Solid Light, Sean Slemon’s solo show @ David Krut Arts Resource, he will create one of his site-specific window/light installations, and is producing a series of etchings that both document and dialogue with the aforementioned works. These are drawings that portray light-casted edifices, interior forests, and memorialized street trees – all relaying a tangible softness and careful humor, with his trademarked hint to larger uncertainties.

Slemon’s work is fragmentation, distortion and refraction, framed. From his new sketches that turn trees into bound marionettes, to his now-known possession of space through careful measuring, he is confusing our notions of constitution, and asking us to enjoy being confused. Don’t miss this fascinating exhibition @ David Krut Arts Resource on Thursday June 22nd at 18:00.

140 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood.
Tel: 011 880 4242
www.davidkrutpublishing.com
www.davidkrut.com
09h00-17h00, Sat 09h00-16h00

Archives

11 May 2006 by sean slemon

Whitney: Part too

Torqued Chadelier Release, Rodney Graham.

Over the last few days, I have been doing research further reading into the current Whitney biennial.
There have been a few things I have noticed, from going to the show, reading and figuring out the catalogue and looking at various reviews and interviews with the curators before and after the exhibition.

Over all the hanging height is relatively low. Making you have to actually stoop to view some of the works. I know that this is not standard for the Whitney as there is an exhibition in another part of the building not linked to the biennial, which is hung higher. Maybe contemporary work needs to be hung lower A. because we are shrinking as a race, or B. because, its just so low!

In looking at the video and technology based installations, most of them have their guts showing- no effort to conceal/ hide the working of the now little seen 16 or 32 mm projection set ups. Previously there would have been a fear of people tampering with this stuff, or getting their little fingers stuck in the spinning wheels. Strangely this seems to be no longer the case. Its all hanging out, but not consistently enough for it to be an over all curatorial decision. In some cases, the looped 16mm set-ups are more enthralling than the artwork itself. This decision for the machinery to be made visible is only conceptually relevant in one case- that of the Torqued Chandelier Release by Rodney Graham, where the use of the projector, its speed and the film reference one another. A few of the other projections were very well concealed- so much so that when you walk into the room you actually cannot see a thing and walk into the person in front of you.
My hunch is this – they ran out of either time or money in installing and concealing the projections, resulting in some of them not being concealed.

The museum labels for almost every single work on show are well written and succinct. They carefully explain either a bit about the artists, or the work. The show has been made accessible to all by this action. In most shows in New York, your lucky if you get a label at all, and now they are everywhere, plastered like pages of a small book, next to each work. Don’t get me wrong- I appreciated them and the information they provided. But this indicates a few things- the curators felt the need to justify some of their choices by providing explanations. They feel that the show required an additional explanation, and thirdly the artworks required more than just themselves in order to function. Context was required. In some cases, the label was the artwork, with Jordan Wolfson’s painting and scraping of the gallery walls. A well justified conceptual solution- though I do doubt that many people even saw or read that particular label.

The catalogue is another thing in and of itself. It took me a while to navigate it, and I am not that stupid. I think. I bought it because I felt it was actually more interesting than the show itself. It’s designed to be pulled apart and is an artwork itself. Each page has is leaf that folds out into and 11/17 inch page- one image from each artist on the show, a work called Draw me a sheep, somehow apparently inspired by the story of the little prince. But I Have to say the images are not that compelling.

I find it ironic that the show has produced a catalogue that is designed to be pulled apart and dispersed. It shows to me that they don’t want it sticking around too long, maybe to make way for the next big thing. Another interesting point is that the information available on the labels, is not repeated within the catalogue. So if your looking for some of what you saw in the show, you wont find much of it. The catalogue is not so much of the show, but more of the artists of the show and maybe it was too obvious to put the works on show in the catalogue, or else the work was just not yet made, or once again they ran out of time- Speculation on my part, but highly possible given the way these exhibitions go, with such short time lines for the project.

An interview I read had Philippe Vergne stating that this was not meant to be a representation of the “best” work in either America, or the world. It was more intended to simply be a taste of what is happening now. This of course is the assumption that most viewers have- you see something terrible and you say- “they think this is good art-these curators? “ Which is not the case. It’s an aspect of what is going on. It seems that the curators have not attempted to show good or bad art, but just art that is happening now. They stated that, Yes, there are many good artists not included in this biennial. Of course the Whitney does not want to be seen saying such a blatant statement as they are meant to be showing what the public consider to be good art.

What I am getting at here is that the information related to the biennial has been distributed in contrasting modes of high and low accessibility- freely available and some hard to get at. Some things are obviously pointed out and others not and I am fascinated by the ambiguity within a single show of this nature. There seems to be a certain lack of cohesion between the various modes of information

Information is spread around for you to find, piecing together the parts can make up the whole, I have found, but this does not happen completely.

The curators also stated that they made up a fictitious third curator named Toni Burlap, (who wrote the catalogue essay). This came out of an initial insider joke between the curators, who stated that the show was not about making lists of artists, but about having fun, and play, and energizing the space through this. They seem to have somewhat separated them selves form the show by making use of this third person –a curator who also writes. So is the motivation of this third person- an imaginary curator supposed to allow freedom, dissociation? Or lack of responsibility.

We shall see. Artists can only rework so many ideas, until they need to have some of their own. And soon I hope that they will.

Archives

08 May 2006 by sean slemon

Whitney -part one

My first Biennial
What to say. Simply being in New York and keeping an eye on the process of first, the selection of curators, then general banter in bars over what will happen, subsequently leading to the artist selections being released and now finally the show, predictably leading to all sorts of bitchiness, boredom and disinterest along with a review here and there by both artists and critics, things seem to be just about on track.
Now to wait while the mistakes slowly disseminate themselves into the market, burning themselves out to leave the strongest surviving. It’s beginning to sound like a battle ground is’nt it. Well in some ways it is. The good work really does stand out. Further research into the bad work simply makes it even worse. A closer look, should you wish to depress yourself, will reveal frequent use of the naive, the abject and the complete lack of skill, concept or even thought.
Come on Chrisi! What made you think when you saw that work by Miles Davis that it would really fit in or look good in the Whitney, hung at its low low level that you had to stoop to see some of the Basquiatian scrawl at the bottom. Not to mention the adolescent drawings of a simple badly told depressing fairy tale by Taylor Meade. Daniel Johnston had a go too- with a group of A4 drawings in felt tip pens, supposedly reminiscent not only of himself but also our time.
The work that stuck in my mind the most was 1st Light by Paul Chan: intelligent use of a projector with an animation that was gentle, subtle and well coordinated with the installation, the medium and its subject matter, well installed and stunningly made. Robert Gober has a series of photographs, which were the quiet from the storm. Parts of the installation made you feel like you were in a shopping mall. The substantial doses of teenage angst here and there with bad drawing and lack of skill didn’t really serve to impress me over all. Many went for the shock factors of sex and death. The Wrong gallery produced a show that was intelligent and straightforward getting its message across and its political opinions with skill.
Richard Serra’s drawing simply stating, “stop b sh”. A clear message that really here I am sure was speaking to the converted, and if they weren’t already did they really look – or even dare to go inside the Whitney. Some were offended by the overt political tones, but I cant speak to that.
I got the catalogue too. So far so good-some good essays on contemporary work, with the book designed to be pulled apart, to reveal fold out posters, one by each artist on the show.
Is’nt it ironic that now we need to design the catalogues so that they fall apart- lasting only a short time. Makes sense-this way we’ll have enough mental and physical space for the next Show.
More later on this.