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Laurent Grasso — The Panoptes Project
Olivier Malingue Gallery — 4 october – 9 december 2017
Laurent Grasso has selected historical pieces by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Francis Picabia, and Odilon Redon, among others, to be shown alongside his own new and past works. A blurring atmosphere, interspersed with a multitude of eyes pointing the interior of the space, pointing us, the visitors. An interesting mix of works, from the neon eye ‘Untitled’, to the rock-shaped sculpture ‘Zechariah’s Vision’ and to the oil painting series ‘Studies Into the Past’, emerge Grasso’s long-standing interest for the Foucauldian surveillance gaze as well as systems for astrological observation or the entoptic vision; an interesting investigation of the cultural and historical meanings of this symbol, able to disturb and fascinate us at the same time.
Laurent Grasso – The Panoptes Project – Installation view – Photo credit Marcus Peel – Courtesy of Olivier Malingue Ltd, London
Elaine Lustig Cohen P!CKER, PART I — Looking Backward to Look Forward
Stanley Picker Gallery — 28 September 2017 – 27 January 2018
Stanley Picker Gallery together with P!, the New York gallery and ‘Mom-and-Pop-Kunsthalle’ founded by Prem Krishnamurthy present a solo exhibition featuring the American artist and graphic designer Elaine Lustig Cohen: a display of artworks, design objects, and archival materials showing an abstraction inspired by Constructivism, Dada, and the Bauhaus. This is a ‘meta-exhibition’ around the idea of multifaceted practice which truly celebrates the dialogue between curatorial and artistic work and extends even beyond this to include writing, editing, publishing, and producing performative situations in which other actions may emerge. In November the exhibition will change to focus on Céline Condorelli’s work, in a continuation of her recent show at P!, ‘Epilogue’, the last show before Krishnamurthy closed the space.
Elaine Lustig Cohen, Centered (1967), painting, dimensions unknown. Courtesy the artist, elainelustigcohen.com
Martin Puryear
Parasol Unit — 19 September – 6 December 2017
This is the first solo exhibition in a UK public institution for the acclaimed American artist Martin Puryear, featuring approximately thirty works and spanning almost 40 years of the artist’s career. Combining a poetic evocation through form with a devotion to traditional craft, Puryear examines issues as identity, culture, and history. In the ground floor gallery are presented large-scale sculptures, while in the first floor, less familiar works on paper and mixed-media wall sculptures. Elegant and playful shapes, informed by the natural world and by ordinary objects, made with materials such as wood, stone, tar, bronze, and wire. Aiming to balance the opposition of a volumetric, closed form with one that is open yet inaccessible, Puryear encourages our physical engagement with these objects and the act of viewing itself.
Martin Puryear, ‘Big Phrygian’ (detail), 2010–2014. Painted red cedar, 147.3 x 101.6 x 193 cm (58 x 40 x 76 in). Glenstone Museum, Potomac, MD, USA. Photography by Photography by Ron Amstutz. © Martin Puryear, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
John Akomfrah — Purple
The Curve, Barbican Centre — 6 October 2017 – 7 January 2018
British artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah has developed a new Barbican project for The Curve space: a dramatic video installation, which unfold ideas around incremental shifts in climate change across the planet and its effects on human communities, biodiversity and the wilderness. A six-channel collage piece, formed by archival footage mixed with newly shot film from across the planet; surrounded by the dark and immersed in the sound of music, we are traveling with Akomfrah across multiple timezones, climates, and altitudes – from the oil fields of Texas to the glaciers Greenland and in Alaska. A message is conveyed and we’re asked to reflect on the relationship between our locality and the bigger issue of how we belong on the planet.
John Akomfrah Still frame from Purple, 2017. Six screen film installation by John Akomfrah. © Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery
Torbjørn Rødland — The Touch That Made You
Serpentine Sackler Gallery — 29 September 2017 – 19 November 2017
Rødland’s exhibition The Touch That Made You presents a selection of photographs from the past two decades, a mix of portraits, still life and landscapes, which appear to us simultaneously foreign and familiar, lyrical and humorous. Rødland draws attention to the constructed nature and the tactility of the analog image and creates works which moves from concrete to abstract, open to the potential of unexpected outcomes. Although he photographs everything from a ‘distant’ eye, his aim is to provoke tangible responses. As he explained: “I’d like the viewer to react to my prints as self-conscious and slightly paranoid bodies, not just as a pair of eyes,”.
Torbjørn Rødland, Trichotillomania, 2010, Private Collection
Torbjørn Rødland, Apple, 2006, Collection FRAC Nord Pas de Calais, France
