Edmund de Waal "ten thousand things" @ Gagosian | Beverly Hills

a lecture on the weather, 2015

290 porcelain vessels in wood, aluminum, and glass vitrine

41 5/8 x 62 3/8 x 4 5/16

Lichtzwang, 2014

281 porcelain vessels in 2 wood, aluminum, and glass vitrines

108 x 106 3/8 x 5 1/2 inches

black milk,  2015

237 porcelain vessels in  a pair of wood, aluminum, and glass vitrines

108 x 16 3/8 x 5 1/2 inches

composition for three voices, 2015

45 porcelain vessels with painted and gilded lead blocks in 15

aluminum and plexiglas vitrines

14 15/16 x 209 7/16 x 3 15/16 inches

a new ground, III, 2015

14 porcelain vessels and Cor-Ten steel blocks in 5 steel, Corian, and 

plexiglas vitrines

24 x 50 3/8 x 38 3/4 inches

two sounds, 2015

two sounds, I, 2015

5 porcelain vessels on Cor-Ten steel shelf

1 x 17 3/4 x 4 inches

a word, a name, a place, 2015

16 porcelain vessels and 14 plaster blocks in aluminum cabinet

35 7/16 x 43 5/16 x 7 7/8 inches

to speak to you, 2015

17 porcelain vessels and 10 Cor-Ten steel blocks in aluminum cabinet

35 7/16 x 43 5/16 x 7 7/8 inches

the ten thousand things,  for John Cage, 2015

#835, 2015

18 porcelain vessels in 2 steel and plexiglas vitrines

19 11/16 x 45 11/16 x 13 3/4 inches

three sounds, 2015

11 porcelain vessels on 2 Cor-Ten steel shelves

5 1/2 x 43 5/16 x 3 15/16 inches

a place made fast, 2014

160 porcelain vessels with gilding in wood, aluminum, and glass vitrine

90 9/16 x 118 1/8 x 4 5/16 inches

case study #2, 2015

14 porcelain vessels and 3 Cor-Ten steel blocks in steel and

plexiglas vitrine

19 11/16 x 43 5/16 x 3 15/16

bauspiel,  2014

17 porcelain vessels in 7 aluminum and plexiglas vitrines

on plexiglas plinth

22 1/16 x 39 3/8 x 17 11/16 inches

Objects on shelves. Vessels. Book shelves but not. Flattening with distance. Subtle color shift in otherwise monochromatic schemes. Pairs. Groupings. Sequences. Orders? Sculptural object or flat surface seems to be the dilemma. Ceramic. Steel. The materials of permanence (dominance?). Votive. Candle holders. Aromatics. Ash trays. Vases. Cylinder and geometric volume. Irrational and rational. Registration of time in rust, a natural process taken up by anyone who employs ferrous metals. Beauty in decay. Monolithic. Multi lithos? Surface treatment. Process and alchemy. Timeless. Reflective containment or open, absorptive and exposed. Seriality and difference. Accumulation. Precious and quiet. Orange edge. Revealing a thought process like Judd with a taste for the chance irregularity of Smithson. Anti-heroic ((Serra)). Composition and rhythm. Cage.

Place and Placement.

Modes of display.

Displacement.

Containers, contained inside of containers, Edmund de Waal's presentation of works at Gagosian was just about the nicest thing that I have ever seen in this space.  Elegant, quiet and calming in their subtleties formally despite referencing monumental works of history (Judd, Serra, and Hirst), the works in this show seemed to speak to rhythms sensed rather than measured despite musical measures taken.  Their matryoshka-like, fractal effect seemed manageable despite the infinitude of options proposed within the structures given.  Composed arrangements not only produced their own harmonies and reflected time individually and relationally, but they also situated within a greater whole of the show of the architecture. So, it was difficult not to read works through other works, though I didn't assume they were constellated for any thing other than happenstance moments between parts, which thereby reinforces the game they seem to play between moments and durations.  It was not site condition nor a whole installation, though it was nice to see that a work such as composition for three voices is to be taken as a whole rather than parsed in parts. For, I could easily see someone temped to sell it brick by brick.  That the work played with boundaries reinforces what was most important about work in terms permeable surface conditions, inside and out.

Michael McMillen "Outpost" @ LA Louver

Dr. Crump's Mobile Field Lab [aka Inductive Geo-Imaging Field Laboratory], 2004-2014

mixed media installation with four films, featuring "Politbureau," "Science Institute Presents," "Wasteland" and "The End"

dimensions variable

Finger Tension Tower 1, 1980

wood, metal, desert detritus

29 1/4 x 11 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches

Ocean Park, 1985

painted wood & metal construction

38 x 60 x 7 inches

Outpost, 2015

reengineered chair, painted wood and metal, 19th century clock mechanism

52 x 19 x 28 inches

Receiver, 2014-2016

mixed media constructions; reengineered chair, vintage military electronics

"Tides" (03:10)

dimensions variable

Transmitter, 2014

painted wood, metal construction, motor, electronic beacon

60 1/2  x 17 x 22 inches

Della Sala (Interior with stairs), 1985

mixed media

16 x 12 x 15 inches

Theater of LA. facade and prop. Passage of time. Like the moving image. Text. Image. Cut. Fast forward. Meanwhile... Cold War aesthetic, the specter of nuclear war against the promise of a better life. TV dinner! cf. Richard Hawkins pagodas in terms of a shabby surface that references rural Texas lifestyle and domesticity, for example. The west... Kenholz installation. Waves go in. Waves go out. As the world turns. A beacon of change to come. Staircase descent. 

The more I think about this show, the more it's difficult to avoid the obvious Duchamp references. Not just the gratuitous use of readymades but also specific gestures such as a chair (which is not so different from a stool), simple rotating object in Transmitter, and especially Della Sala which seems like an odd hybrid of Nude Descending a Staircase and Etant Donnes. So, then what? Readymade of a readymade? Perhaps clues lie in the very next show running currently at LA Louver, Ed Kienholz Televisions.

The first time I encountered McMillen's work was at LACMA some twenty-five years ago.  Stepping into The Central Meridian (aka The Garage), 1981, was not only like time-traveling in general, it was something much more familiar, more familial.  My assumption was that we all know a garage like this, one full of things to tinker, projects laid out in midstream, perhaps the 20th century studio of suburbia middle America.  Garage bands spawn from similar locales. So, encountering Dr. Crump's Lab was a bit like the Garage but with so much time having passed in between, for me.  When I look at the works of McMillen in this show, contemporary or slightly dated ones, the aesthetic seems to have stood still somewhere between Hollywood backlot, prop house, and neighboring garages everywhere, elsewhere. Yet, the world still turns, still.