Wednesday, July 17, 2013
James Turrell "Sooner Than Later, Roden Crater" @ Kayne Corcoran and Griffin
Obviously not meant to be a "Turrell" show as we know it from his phenomenological light works, the sort of "behind the scenes" open studio feel that pervades this presentation of models, artifacts, and references is at least interesting in the most didactic ways. So, an emphasis on ocular volume and contours of space to suggest as much seems clear, that is to say layers build over time to produce the experience. Not quite sure what else to say (and perhaps there isn't much more really), the instruments, in particular, leave an air of appearances that I'm not quite sure what to make of or care about...
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Urs Fischer @ MOCA LA, Grand
Whitewash over black ground brings back memories. I'm thinking about my own Collapse paintings of 2007-2008. I get it. Light over dark. Bright fluid=light=stream of consciousness fragments. There is no end; the whole does not unify. Edges (transitional spaces) are unruly at best.
This show literalizes as much but perhaps too vapidly as patrons wander and mill about snapping photos in a kind of feeding frenzy as if he/she is getting it, (as if I am getting it)!
What lies beneath is unsubstantial (structure) as ephemeral as surface. The body, building both metaphors (oil and water, which one's which) for one another. Butter, cheese, and honey...(words overheard, blurted in the viewing context)! Female beauty; destructive male tendencies. Cliches all! Where will all these snapshots go? The entropic repository of Alexandria or Babel?
Photogenic show or contemporary obsession? They are not to be looked at, to be regarded; they are to be recorded, to be seen by and for a machine. I, too, am complicit in this moment. Commodities and objects, illusions all. Absence of a body from a warped bed. No rest. Everything is everything. This too shall pass. Objects of genericized dimension, Platonic conventions. Male objects; female bed. Not Rauschenberg.
Suspended spectacle (the raindrops, of course). Not Eliasson "Beauty." Eroded interiors; smudged exteriors. Naughty ploys of privilege. Eaten roofs and slanted drips. SyFy. Light and shadow. Cloo. Kloo.
Bread. Expanded foam. Tim Burton. Chris Burden. Beasts of burden (Cattelan). Weight of every move must be lifted (elevated?) in order to flow effortlessly. Light as bell. Throat suspension. What is real? Rocks?
