Katelyn Ledford : Pleased as Punch

 

Katelyn Ledford’s show Pleased as Punch is a delightfully ridiculous jaunt through all methods of painting creation. Her paintings combine trompe l’oeil, actual collaged objects, cartoonish drawing, glitter, fur, buttons, as well as countless other configurations to create what might be considered a material smorgasbord. These combined creations depict images of a sort of adolescent feminine dystopia, showcasing Images of squished baby dolls, burning doll houses, and pink chainlink. The mixture of unapologetically garish use of material and kitschy imagery make for funny, eye-catching work. 

To someone who shared a hilariously awkward girly adolescence, I find these works to almost embody a universal truth. I wonder if they are somewhat opaque for people who had a completely different experience of growing up, or if their imagery is enough to impart the specific  experience. I think movies and popular culture have oversaturated this sort of story,  of an angsty teenage girl’s inner world. I wonder if these works play into that television trope, perhaps even mocking it, or if what viewers respond to is an actual lived reality that these pieces memorialize.

 

Audrey Doyle 

Reynier Leyva Novo: Methuselah

Reynier Leyna Novo's Methuselah offers a unique opportunity to observe a single monarch butterfly on its journey migrating from Canada to Mexico. Methuselah is located in an expansive gallery space, with white, empty walls and a lofty ceiling. Viewers are invited to put on VR headsets to see and follow the virtual butterfly on its migration path throughout this space. The exhibit is supplemented with a website that follows the journey of this avatar in real time as well.  Methuselah raises questions about the security of borders, and relates to issues such as migration, climate change, and the importance of transnational cooperation.

Novo, a cuban artist based in Houston, Texas, creates work that challenges symbols of power and ideology, as well as the ability of the individual to create change in our society. His practice focuses on mining historical data and official documents that he transforms into conceptual and minimalist sculptures and multimedia installations. When creating Methuselah, Novo worked with team of butterfly experts, taxidermists, animators, computer modelers, and software designers in order to create a program that accurately replicates the the butterfly movements on its migration. 

The concept of Methuselah is compelling; the monarch butterfly is an intriguing metaphor for migration and cooperation. Additionally, the software and VR experience designed for this exhibit offers an unprecedented look into the life of the butterfly. On my visit, the butterfly was resting, hanging onto an invisible branch or plant as I circled around it to view it from all angles. It felt less like a minimalist symbol for all of these important issues and more accidental, like the avatar of the butterfly had glitched. It was underwhelming when the grandness of the gallery space seem to promise so much more. 

-Brittney Fang

Nick Cave – Soundsuits

The Soundsuits series is Nick Cave's most famous work. Nick Cave produced the first soundsuits after Rodney King, a black man, was beaten by police in 1991. These soundsuits completely covered the human body, disguising the shape, gender, race and class of the wearer, thus forcing the viewer to watch without judgment.

Nick Cave is inspired by African artistic traditions, armor, textiles, and stereotypical female objects. For example, a soundsuit made of African braids in the Guggenheim gallery. In addition, globes, cloth dolls, vintage rubber toys, plastic buttons, wires, feathers and sequins are among the materials he uses in his soundsuit. He uses these familiar objects to create an atmosphere where those objects are rearranged in such a way that represent material and social culture.

Typically, soundsuits are presented as static sculptures. However, they can also be viewed through live performance, photography and video. Cave devises his own performances. He effectively connects static objects in museum spaces with human movement. Those soundsuits combine sculpture, fashion, and performance to connect the anxieties and divisions of our time with the inwardness of the body. Through his soundsuits, Cave not only reinvents mundane objects into something beautiful but also turns painful experiences into something hopeful. The main purpose is to use art to combat any form of discrimination.  They also allow the viewer to notice the art and action of the person in the suit, rather than the social values.

—Yao Zhuo

URS FISCHER： Chaos#501

URS FISCHER： Chaos#501

“I like the idea of error. I think it’s just a beautiful word. Anything we do successfully in life is a potential error.”  Urs Fischer, a New York City-based artist, mentioned it on The Brant Foundation. This perspective lends his art a fascinating, playful, and defies limits.

The NFT artwork, Chaos #501, is built from thousands of 3D models. Most of the items are familiar, such as basketball, toilet, Connect Four, and wigs. Those objects are rotating and are not limited by the physical rules of our world as they infinitely penetrate one another across the screen. These sculptures operate as archaeology in the present, aiming to be able to show the form of three-dimensional sculpture in motion. 

Fischer's practice is characterized by a diversity of materials, strategies, and concepts. One of his most famous works is a giant wax figure, Untitled (2011), modeled after Jambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women (1579–83). The wax drips and solidifies during the melting process until it becomes nothing like death. The work mixes the ephemeral and the unique as it melts. Fischer experimented with previously uncharted territory in the Chaos series, expanding materials from real materials like clay and wax to digital virtual figures.

Fischer's work is a distortion of reality that openly admits to being influenced by the Dada, Surrealism, and Pop Art movements. These movements resemble manipulating pre-made images to create surprising and inventive combinations, scale shifts, and occasionally strong collisions of visual information. On average, work such as his computer sculpture NFT series, "Chaos," sells for approximately $100,000. A 3D model fusing an ice cube tray with a frozen steak sold for nearly $70,000. Do commercial considerations and trends make this art valuable beyond the original art?

 —Yao Zhuo

Keita Morimoto, In Between Shadows - ATM Gallery

    Tokyo based artist Keita Morimoto sets a nostalgic tone at ATM Gallery. Having immigrated to Canada at the age of 16 and spending 16 years of his life there, Keita is known for his paintings of Toronto cityscapes and inhabitants. Keita typically works in oil on linen and incorporates classic techniques into modern imagery, transforming everyday scenes into extraordinary ones.

His series In Between Shadows, takes one on a journey through personal snapshots of moments in time. He emphasizes the light, shadow and color of night scenes in the city, pulling saturated hues from the light sources into his subject matter. Street lamps, the glowing light of vending machines, and neon signs of storefronts illuminate his paintings. His work depicts a first person perspective of a scene, giving one the feeling that they are looking through Keita’s eyes. Only a few of his works in this series include bystanders and other people, however these paintings do not lack a focal point. The light sources make the works become what is alive.

Keita usually paints his works in fastidious detail, but as one moves in closer, the calculated, individual strokes of color are revealed. Complimentary colors and the push and pull of warm and cool tones make Keita’s work so successful. One will find that within the focal points of light, there lies a variety of color, pushing the rest of the scene backward into a more static and limited palette of blue and green hues. 

One might be surprised to feel an emotional connection while gazing upon street lamps and illuminated vending machine lights, but Keita’s work is a deja vu experience. The scenes in his paintings have a familiarity, as if they’ve been experienced already, universally. They are moments one might long for or perhaps forgot about. 

-Moira Kelly (Revision)

Abshalom Jac Lahav, The Jewish Museum

 

    New York's Jewish Museum presented a host of works that reflected the rich history of Jewish culture. In this context, Abshalom Jac Lahav's six selections from their series "48 Jews" featured portraiture that felt reminiscent of Francis Bacon's 70s self-portraits. The blurring of facial and other details, while retaining the realism of featured objects, reflects this. Lahav's featured figures are "Jews with very public media profiles"; they are in this presentation Monica Lewinsky, Anne Frank, Alan Greenspan, Noam Chomsky, Lee Krasner, and Bob Dylan.

    Lahav's process is one that rides against the idea of the definitive, single portrait of an individual, which often reflects solidification and permanence. Lahav continually works on his portraits - adding, discarding, or entirely remaking his paintings of these chosen individuals as the work "...explores[s] the ways the mass media shapes or distorts identity," according to the exhibition's wall text.

    The paintings of Anne Frank and Marcia Gay Harden (portraying Lee Krasner) emphasize these words. Lahav's portrait of Anne Frank is heavily blurred, as if put through a scanner and shaken side-to-side for intended distortion. The viewer, if familiar with the heroine, recognizes the facial features of the young girl but pauses at her blurred image and is pulled in. Another of Lahav's works adds to this visual narrative of distortion, his portrait of Marcia Gay Harden portraying Lee Krasner. Her face in black and white contrasts with the colored background and the ceiling fan and the mirror that she holds. The subject's face is slightly less blurred than Frank's but still carries a distortion that holds the series together in Lahav's deliberate concept for the works. 

Bernd & Hilla Becher, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Repetition is the key word that comes to mind at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition: Bernd & Hilla Becher. The exhibition consists of 6 galleries, showcasing photo after photo of industrial architectural structures, as well as a small number of early drawings and paintings. The Bechers’ photographs most frequently depict a single industrial structure, centered in the image, in black and white. This compositional repetition allows the viewer to notice the variation between each subject. Viewing so many similarly photographed structures together encourages one to search for the unique details of each. Some, such as “Cooling Tower, Zeche Mont Cenis, Herne, Ruhr Region, Germany”, are distinctive in their symmetry. By contrast, “Gravel Plant, Günzberg, Germany” is notable for the protruding triangular shape on only one side of the structure. The consistent and measured photographic style makes these details the protagonists of the exhibition.

While this exhibition may be a feast for those who appreciate the search for beauty in the mundane, it may be a puzzle for those who come to the Met in search of virtuosity. The strength of the Bechers’ work is in its repetition, which turns its understated nature into a point of interest. It is not likely that viewers will be compelled to rush to a specific, eye catching piece when they enter a gallery. The exhibition rewards close, consistent attention, which may compel those in a rush to pass it by. This effect of the exhibition mimics the visual bias one may have towards the seemingly ordinary architecture that the Bechers photograph, underscoring the idea that attention is often the main factor that lends importance to a subject.

Revision:

Repetition is the word that comes to mind at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition: Bernd & Hilla Becher. The exhibition consists of six galleries, showcasing photo after photo of industrial architectural structures, as well as a small number of early drawings and paintings. The Bechers’ photographs most frequently depict a single industrial structure, centered in the image, in black and white. This compositional repetition allows the viewer to notice variations between subjects. Viewing so many similarly photographed structures together encourages one to search for the unique details of each. Some, such as “Cooling Tower, Zeche Mont Cenis, Herne, Ruhr Region, Germany”, are distinctive in their symmetry. By contrast, “Gravel Plant, Günzberg, Germany” is notable for the protruding triangular shape on only one side of the structure. The consistent and measured photographic style makes these details the protagonists of the exhibition. 

While this exhibition will be a feast for those who appreciate the search for beauty in the mundane, it may be a puzzle for those who come to the Met in search of masterpieces. The strength of the Bechers’ work is in its repetition, which turns its understated nature into a point of interest. It is not likely that viewers will be compelled to rush to a specific, eye catching piece when they enter a gallery. The exhibition rewards close, consistent attention, those in a rush may pass it by. This effect of the exhibition mimics the bias one may have against the seemingly ordinary architectures that the Bechers photograph, underscoring the idea that artists’ and viewers’ attention is often the main factor that lends importance to a subject.