SEAN SCULLY - A SPACE BETWEEN DUALITY AND DICHOTOMY.
'LANDLINE', Hanover Square - LONDON. Photographed by Tom Gu.
Image by Tom Gu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).
The newly unveiled sculpture by Sean Scully in Hanover Square - corners the viewer with an abrupt stillness.
It's linear flatness - not unlike the two-dimensional experience felt when gazing upon a Sean Scully painting - is powerfully life-affirming and arrestingly visual.
The artists' idiosyncratic palette of stripes is immediately recognisable. A style that can be traced back to 1969 when Scully first visited Morocco and saw the patterned fabrics cut into jillabas worn by the hooded locals.
The Scully stripes are rugged yet meticulous and instinctively created - like handmade flags - the stripes of a chosen nation without the flash of stars.
In contrast 'Landline' is glossily polished, its glazed surfaces reflective of the well-healed neighborhood in which it resides.
Camouflaged into its environment and reflecting an ever-changing cityscape and time frame. From the Georgian limestone to industrial red brick and the darkly urban sleek of steel and glass. The delicacy of the trees and omnipresent sky - all reflected back and up from this totem of time.
Image by Tom Gu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).
The sculpture's tertiary palette evokes the mystery of the artists' paintings - deepest charcoal flecked with grey - like a residue of another layer beneath - or a whisper of pigment caught up within the brush stroke, rust - like separated oil drops from meat juices that have solidified, verdigre green - leafy fresh - and darkly oxidised - Creamy limestone - warmly seductive and beneficent - and dove grey - feather light - patterned with the faintest chalken trails - as if from a passing aeroplane observed from afar.
The patination within the stone is precise in time and formation - sediments millennia old - not created for aesthetic appeal but from the chemical reaction of extreme pressure. A characteristic of truth selected for its solemn nobility - a surface unseen before - sliced open with unimaginable pre-dynastic Egyptian precision.
The diversity of the materials used within the work - chosen for colour are geographically tethered to the specific global quarries which harvest the earth's DNA - a direct link to the multi-ethnicity of the sculptures location.
The splendor of marble - a material forever connected with prestige, nobility, and strength - the cenotaph, the temple steps, the chic boutiques and hotel foyers of nearby Mayfair - the babies head baptised in the stone font - the carved headstone selected in memorium - a material chosen to begin and end a life - 'Landline’ seems destined to contribute to defining the legacy of an artist - whose work is collected within the most vaulted international museum collections - and yet this work pinpoints directly back to the British capital - the city of the artist's adolescence.
It is impossible to not feel the sober contemplation of another tower, rather taller than this one-story sculpture in the adjacent borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Image by Tom Gu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).
‘Landline’ by Sean Scully RA. Hanover Square, London W1S.
CALLUM HELCKE - A SPACE BETWEEN SENSE AND SCENT.
M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) meet dancer and future perfumier Callum Helcke. Photographed by Arnan Wang.
March 2023, LONDON.
In the short time I have known you, you strike me as a very driven person - may I ask what drives you forward?
What drives me...I can’t say I know for certain what it is. The things that drive me appear to change from time to time depending on my age, where I am, and who I am surrounded by. Yet there is a consistent theme that runs through the different periods of my life – it is something like a pursuit of meaning.
From a young age, the idea of chasing objective or materialistic goals has never interested me. Yet in my teenage years, I was never able to find a strong passion for any single pursuit – creative or academic – that I resonated with enough to envisage in my future. This led to feeling lost and indifferent - Still, I would always give my all to my endeavours without really knowing why...
During college, a shift in the foundations of my worldview started to take place that began to align my mind to my behaviour. Confused about my future and at a loss for ideas, I began to wonder why I tried so hard at everything, even though I had such little care for the outcomes. Although unconsciously, a sense of lack and a need to please others were there, something deeper appeared to resonate with me when in review. This was the deep sense of alignment I felt when pushing to my limits and trying my best – it didn’t matter what it was I was doing.
I have come to realise that what drives me in life may not be assigned to a specific job or hobby, but rather to the self-discovery that occurs during complete immersion in a craft. My passion in life arises from a curiosity for self and a longing to unveil the unknown, that which is only accessible when I give my all. The choice or direction of my pursuits seems guided by something bigger than me, yet each of the things I pursue seem to provide a question and an answer - about myself or the world.
You speak so passionately about perfume - a world that seems to connect so many sensibilities - can you express why fragrance resonates with you?
Scent lets me think and feel without words.
Growing up with parents who spend a lot of time on their garden, my summer memories are entirely coloured by scent. You could say I had a kind of addiction to smelling flowers when I was child. My sense of the seasons was - and still is - guided by the smell outside my bedroom window when I wake. The absent smell of snow in winter, the invigorating glow of hyacinths in spring, the hazy heat of tarmac in summer and the burnt wood of autumn. When I am captured by scent, there is a space between my thoughts and feelings – even if momentary – that feels more real than real.
A similar space appears to exist with all sensory experiences when one pays deep attention to them, though my affinity lies with the sense of smell. It was only recently however that I realised a link to perfumery. Having worked in the flavour industry during a year placement in my chemistry degree, my interest in perfumery became more tangible as I came to understand the science of the ingredients I was working with. During my spare time on this work placement, I discovered the unique perfumes of companies like ‘Le Labo’ and ‘Maison Margiela’. Fragrances that evoke a memory of summer or capture the essence of a city as opposed to typical masculine/feminine accords. How do the perfumers behind these fragrances make scents that are so intimately nostalgic and familiar, yet so distinct and matchless that they might be from another world?
With fragrance but smell in general, there is a world of chemistry and emotion connecting the body and mind with limitless possibilities. My interests here were foremost scientific due to my background in chemistry, but are now equally not so logical. I sort of wonder if I was to put my mind to this craft, what could I uncover about myself and the world?
You are a very fluent person, with languages - verbal and physical - where and how do you express your freedom?
Freedom for me is something that is felt before it is expressed. If I think about it, I am sure that I was feeling and expressing my freedom before I knew that was what I was doing.
Freedom exists in play and exploration. For me, this was abundant in childhood, but then lost in my school years until I discovered dance. Dance and movement in general offered me a mode of self-exploration that transcended the frameworks of academics and logic, though I didn’t necessarily understand the full extent of this when I started. Initially, I was absorbed in the novelty of learning a new craft but I was limited by a need to amaze or impress rather than explore. Maybe this is a consequence of the binary win/lose structure that we become so familiar with at school. It took me some time to learn that you truly can’t win or lose in creative exploration. Can a child win or lose whilst playing? The question is misplaced.
I initially trained as a hip-hop dancer in London but later began exploring movement in general. At first, I trained in teams that performed in showcases and competitions. This is very different to recently where training has become a very personal task - used to self-assess and review - internally mapping my feelings in response to movement. Ironically, performing to crowds may seem like expression, though the way I use movement now feels truer and freer than ever before.
Maybe the biggest turning point in my perspective on expression came during my year off after college where I began learning from Dominic Lawrence. Dom teaches movement as opposed to ‘dance’. In his classes, he cultures a perspective of compassion for oneself, and you feel a kind of spaciousness when exploring with him. This view was new and refreshing and expanded my perspective of dance to a form of meditation and self-discovery.
In every action, choice, or movement, I have learned that there exists the opportunity to step back, observe and create space. With this opens a range of new dimensions and possibilities that were once missed. Here I feel lies a truer sense of freedom which is felt internally and expressed genuinely. When I give myself to this process fully, I feel as free as a child.
During the pandemic, you worked at a pharmacy - this must have been a very challenging experience during such an unprecedented time - what did you glean from this period?
The pandemic was a strange time. My choice to work at my local pharmacy was initially a selfish one – I wanted work experience as my CV was looking a bit empty - though over my time working there, I became acutely aware of the suffering that people were experiencing, and I felt a sense of duty to my colleagues and the patients.
Before university, I went through a period where I wanted to become a doctor, so I had some knowledge of medicine and drugs that I was able to bring to the job. Initially, I thought the job would be mostly technical – i.e. drug dispensing – but due to the high pressure on our services from the lack of GP appointments, much of my time was spent facing patients.
Looking back, at some points my time at the pharmacy felt like a normal job, but at others, the pressure felt very real. However, what amazed me here was the determination of the pharmacist and his core staff - against the odds - to continue providing the best service possible for patients. The pharmacist knew all the patients by name and would always call to inform them about their prescriptions. Staff at the pharmacy would provide informal consultations where possible to patients who were unable to get GP appointments. In response, patients would treat us like family friends, sometimes bringing cake or home-grown vegetables as a thank you for our services. I came to appreciate the unconditional dedication and service provided by the team at the pharmacy. There are so many individuals out there who go unacknowledged and yet never stop giving. I get the sense that we must cherish these people when we meet them.
In such a difficult time, maybe the thing that shaped me the most was this - despite the extent to which people were suffering, they still had the grit to continue pushing on. Patients struck by terminal illnesses, unable to see family and friends were still pushing on. Partners of those bedridden and in constant pain were providing the best possible care and still pushing on. It made me think - there is always someone out there who is worse off than you, who is also working harder than you. This period ignited a renewed desire to push myself and I became more disciplined than ever before.
You have a strong appreciation for the concept of MA, how did you find out about it and how do you engage with it within your life?
I think I came to experience MA before I knew about it as a concept. Maybe the first time I was exposed to it was when reading ‘Snow Country’ by the Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata. In the opening chapter, the protagonist rides a train into the ‘snow country’ and notices a girl in his carriage through her reflection in the window. He watches intimately as her face dissolves into the stars and mountain-scape beyond. When I first read this scene, I remember pondering the space between each of the objects here – physical and emotional – and how the space is relational rather than empty.
The Japanese ability to highlight that which we normally miss never fails to amaze me. I have always been enamoured by experiences and feelings that are inconclusive and multi-layered. Like novels that ask you to decide how they ended, songs with so much ambience they make you want to cry, or fragrances that take you back to a memory that you don’t have. In all these there is something that feels off-centre, maybe even slightly unsatisfying and I wonder if that space between what we expect and what is could be described as MA.
I am not sure if one definition can completely capture MA – in ikebana, it relates to the space between flowers in an arrangement, in karate, it relates to the safe distance between two opponents, in a painting, it describes the blank space between the artists depictions. To me, these instances make me ask: where is the line between what we define as one thing and what we don’t. The space between is a living relationship and the physical lines drawn sometimes may be illusory.
When applied to my day-to-day life, MA makes me wonder about the gaps that occur in my subjective experience. For example, what lies in the space between thoughts? What about the space between a sensation and its recognition. A view of these smaller things gives me an infinite sense of wonder, for both the world and the body from which experience arises. My common thinking mind can become so caught up in goals or problem solving that the true nature of the subjective experience is missed. MA appears fundamentally a part of experience and our perception, and when I experience it, it spreads all throughout my mind and body in a pervasive calm.
Photographed by Arnan Wang Art Direction M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN)
RAINA SEUNG EUN JUNG - A SPACE BETWEEN MOMENT AND MEMORY.
M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) meet emergent artist Raina Seung Eun Jung - LONDON.
One of the most enriching parts of my job as a teacher is that I get to meet different people at a very particular stage in their lives and see work that is sometimes made in line with who they are, not just who they want to be or who they feel they should be. In the space of a tutorial - that work is sometimes confirmed - it becomes clear as to how somebody thinks... they can hear their own voice back - sometimes for the first time - and If you are really fortunate - you witness the rarest of moments - when they join the dots for themselves...
M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) has a commitment to instinct always - and the uniting of voices from different spaces is central to our appreciation of MA - a space that often remains undetectable in a media beyond a sharp intake of breath.
When asked how I choose the works for the magazine I always reply with the same answer: It must make my heart beat faster.
I first saw some drawings taped to a wall of an empty studio by Raina Seung Eun Jung, oil pastel grazed over thick cartridge paper to form impressions of spaces, interior spaces - that had a specific atmosphere - a fleeting tension that immediately drew me in...
City Kids, 2021 - gouache on silk.
Please describe the process behind your work?
I investigate the coexistence of heterogeneous things while pursuing what I wanted to record. I grew up in Seoul with the uneasy coexistence of traditional Korean culture and my generation’s globalised multicultural outlook. Currently, my expanded painting practice seeks to break the boundaries of medium and homogenised versions of culture by offering the viewer the essence of the moment as a form of memory and creating the space for both of us to exist fully.
I want to know how my knowledge of traditional painting techniques can be applied to record contemporary digitised life. I feel most comfortable using painting to communicate my ideas and trying to reach someone who needs to hear from me. I will keep developing my technical and conceptual competence and push the boundaries of my work as an artist and curator, questioning the reason for my existence and communicating while finding a reason to live.
Your work has such an immersive quality, both in terms of subject and scale - when did you realise that you needed to create works of this nature?
I think I am writing a book called my life through my paintings. I keep writing a book that doesn't know when it will end. I capture my reality, just like shooting scenes from scenarios. As with movies, in the process of filming each scene, you can plan how the movie will be edited and what the result will be, but it is difficult to predict perfectly. Rather than being difficult and obsessed with perfection, the thrill of discovering the unexpected picture is more attractive. Some of my paintings, too, are planned, drawn, structured, and focused on telling a specific story. But when I trust the process and let it flow, it becomes more powerful when I discover unexpected combinations. The scale of the work is determined by the moment I think of the scene. I have this certain voice saying, “This scene should be this size.” based on the vibration and influence of the moment. I make this decision because I want to convey the scene I experienced realistically to the audience. Because I want to show what I see and feel. That kind of mind seems to help give a sense of immersion. I try to communicate by showing the world I see.
Safety greens, 2021 - oil on canvas.
Your use of colour is very specific, can you explain why you are drawn to such palettes?
Colour acts as a language to explain my deep inner feelings. So, the colours in my paintings are not simply for the description of the subject. My emotions exist even at the moment I am drawing, and emotions exist in the scene that I am drawing, so the overlap of emotions from various timelines is captured in colour. The emotions I experienced in that scene and the emotions I experience in the process of painting over time arenexpressed in my own specific colours. For me, colour was the first place where I could be free. Growing up in Korean society, I was able to get closer to myself after finding a way to express my emotions through colour during my growing-up days when I was used to hiding my emotions.
You seem to be drawn to fleeting moments within your work which are very specific and yet have a particular informality to them as well - how do you decide upon what you will paint?
For me, the small things matter. It's because I believe that small, extremely mundane moments built my reality. So I stop and look. Pause for a while and observe those small moments fully, and draw a scent that remains strong. The moment you fully look at and draw creates more value than is left only as a memory. I hope that the small reason I will live tomorrow will also reach the audience as a vibration.
Where you at, 2021 - oil on canvas.
The layering of imagery within your work is fascinating - it feels some how digital and yet you apply physical paint, physical layers - what keeps you returning to this process?
The expression of my emotions through the colours I mentioned earlier is the basis for the layering process. It is the unconscious basis of the scene that I painting. Maybe it is my inner state that I do not want to be found out, and it probably started with a desire for someone to know. In this way, layers work to capture the elements that make up the scene one by one, such as my condition, my point of view, physical, and psychological, the existence of the other person, and the surrounding environment. Of course, painting is two-dimensional, but objects and scenes exist in more than two dimensions, so in the process of capturing that energy, I choose layering. This is because I intuitively believe in the power and space of things that exist in the invisible, and that we only see when we look closely.
Siesta with Maart, 2021 - oil on paper.
JULIAN OPIE - A SPACE BETWEEN 2D AND 5G.
‘Bastide. 2 2022’, Lisson Gallery - LONDON Photographed by Arnan Wang.
Julian Opie - Bastide. 2 2022. Auto paint on aluminium and steel.
Through the gallery glass, 'Bastide. 2 2022', appears like a vinyl sticker - applied to a physical landscape, sharpie black against the bright paper white courtyard walls and the bustling life of an urban concrete, brick, and glass landscape behind.
Only the trees feel real in this surrealist set - bare branches amputated, fingerless limbs - ready to sprout a new - a skeletal town below forms a silhouette of a humanless space, unnervingly near and yet not life-size - A shell - reminding us of uncomfortable truths of news-flash realities of war-torn communities, fled and fired.
The window frames of adjacent buildings - black-mirroring the imagined town - throw the viewer into more confusion - what is real and what is illusion? Trompe-l'œil reality state - a de Chirico echo - A 'sham' construct - created to be viewed from afar - a stage set whose players may be unaware that 'all that glitters is not gold.
Julian Opie - Bastide. 2 2022. Auto paint on aluminium and steel.
The blocked doors and windows of the sculpture - symbolic touchstones permanently outlined - a cross - a flower - a bell - a faceless clock - forever out of time. Traced and repeated so many times that the details are gone, but the outlines remain. The walls are transparent to expose a no-mans-land - like a prison cell - or the charred remains of a burnt building.
Julian Opie - Bastide. 2 2022. Auto paint on aluminium and steel.
From inside, I imagined this playground with sharp edges - as being cast in bitter chocolate - brittle and easy to snap - temptingly meltable - into mirrored pools of gloss - but in fact, the work is created from cool aluminum and steel, coated in perfectly mechanised auto paint. - My mind flashes to Jackson Pollock and his use of alkyd enamel paints - chosen for their satisfyingly spash-able immediacy maybe - but Opie's paint choice is more distant, less human somehow, and altogether slower - which seems to contrast with the immediacy of his appeal conceptually.
Figure 4, position 8. 2022, Figure 3, position 2. 2022, Figure 2, position 4. 2022 - Polished stainless steel.
Flaty monotone graphics - like a series of logos - the buy now immediacy of the takeaway coffee cup - the fast food burger wrapper - but what is Julian Opie wrapping? - his contents is concept, food for thought - food without a face. A trio of faceless characters recline and stretch with no sense of time - the viewer joining the dots for themselves - like a Lichtenstein without the speech bubbles - his work today offers an instant fix for the 5G cravings of an excited youthful audience - but Opie’s offering arrived long before social media or the internet.
In 3D real - the sculptures seen at London’s Lisson gallery are seductive for their scale and satisfying translation to their 2D relatives.
Julian Opie - OP.VR@LISSON/London Lisson Gallery 27 Bell Street, London. Until 15 April 2023. Images by Arnan Wang
JOSEF ALBERS - A SPACE BETWEEN THE GLOAMING AND THE NIGHT.
Paintings Titled Variants - David Zwirner - LONDON.
Josef Albers, Variant/Adobe, 1947. Oil on blotting paper. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
Cool Bauhaus values meet the heat of an arid mid-century Mexico in a series of paintings - seemingly of abstracted landscapes - but in fact, could be seen as self-portraits. Reflected in the soft human touch of Josef Albers's calculated formula for life and art. Part tender poet and part uncompromising Geometrist - his line dissects and exposes an X-ray of what lies beneath.
A democratic appreciation of a single-story residence - a home - a safe space - whose symbolism is human and immediate - protective and peaceful - two windows, a single entrance, a flat roof. An educator on vacation - looking for a sanctuary from the repetition of timetabled terms and an evacuated past left behind in occupied Europe. The blacked-out doorways and windows stare back at the viewer blankly - the deep shadows mysterious - holding our gaze with cold intensity - both inviting from the beating heat and yet unnerving to trespass into territory more emotional than elemental.
Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Patzcuaro, Mexico, 1935-36. Photo negative. ©2023 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society(ARS), New York/DACS, London. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
The minimalism of a single maze-like diagrammatic drawing - rendered with a rule - on finely gridded paper - bowing in its light wooden frame - as if still tacked to a studio wall reminds us of the theorist and educator in Albers - whose working renderings are like a mathematician’s calculations and by no means the conclusion.
Josef Albers, Study for Graphic Tectonics, c. 1942. Ink on paper. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Monte Albán, Mexico, 1939. Gelatin silver print. ©2023 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society(ARS), New York/DACS, London. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
The texture of the canvas is presented raw and rugged beneath the paint layers, a latticework of tiny interwoven threads quietly supporting a career of surfaces, celebrated for their dazzling brilliance and showmanship of survival. The quiet relationship of Herr and Frau Albers is very present within this exhibition - Anni Albers, the now celebrated master weaver, who quietly supported her famous husband throughout his career is seen momentarily in the tiny evidential source material, intricately indexed and presented alongside the masterworks within the exhibition.
Josef Albers' delight as a colourist is exceptional to witness in the flesh, the works seem to testify to the impossible beauty of the natural - each image another time of day, from the optimism of dawn to the acidity of noon, to the heartbreak of the gloaming to the dying embers of night.
Josef Albers, N.M. Black-Pink, 1947. Oil on Masonite. Image courtesy of David Zwirner.
A new dawn - a peaceful democracy presides within these gallery walls - where colour-drenched science is maintained in a meditation of visual poems - where the rhythmic restless sun - whose shadows fall like momentary reminders that time waits for no one - telling us to witness and enjoy the present, eyes open in wonderment - because who can say if that colour combination or day will ever be repeated.
Josef Albers, Paintings Titled Variants. David Zwirner, 24 Grafton Street, London - until 15 April, 2023.
Special Thanks: Sara Chan at David Zwirner London.
FLO RAY - A SPACE BETWEEN THE INTERNAL AND THE EXTERNAL.
M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) meet emergent artist Flo Ray - LONDON.
Please describe the installation that was presented at The Royal College of Art degree show in July 2022.
I made a series of new sculptures for the show that came together to form a larger work called The Movement. It’s comprised of variously anthropomorphic hanging objects that recall punch bags and/or a gathering of bodies. They’re all made from different materials, ranging from the faux-leather used in boxing equipment, to new and used clothing, and they’re held together by a variety of conjunctions – zips, string, cable ties, pins, tape. Both the objects and their surfaces invoke past and impending violence; they’re suspended quietly in space as though waiting for the next blow, their seams unpicked, restitched, and outward-facing. They each carry some kind of signifier, too – a clothing label, key, price tag, ID card, or similar – objects inferring a series of ‘elsewheres’; invisible systems, places, or people not present.
Because they approximate human dimensions, to be among the sculptures feels akin to being in a crowd. A key aspect in the conception of this project was the intention for it to be walked through and navigated by visitors; experienced from within, rather than gazed upon from a distance. This wasn’t able to be fully realised due to space restrictions, so the show was a small selection of a much wider body of work. But I wanted to think about types of action that transform uses of space by shifting perceptions of selfhood from the individual to the power of the collective body. What happens in that shift, and how is it felt? What’s lost and gained? We’re often taught to think of space as merely a container for everything in it, but this isn’t what happens on a social, architectural, or even physical level, among particles. The body and the space it occupies are relationally bound; they actively and mutually create one another. This understanding dissolves the distinction between them, and I’m constantly bowled over by it. By making non-linear passages of movement and thought possible through the work, I hoped that such a dynamic would implicate visitors as participants, rather than viewers.
I started making the work in March 2022, and I was responding directly to the intensified conditions that bodies in public spaces had been subjected to over the preceding couple of years: on one hand, the wide berths and rising suspicion normalised at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic; and on the other, bodies united in close proximity, filling streets in the name of Black life, trans rights, a free Palestine, and climate justice, among other things. In the UK, strikes and marches by staff at dozens of universities were also taking place – including at the RCA. All of these struggles are ongoing, but the polarised attitudes and behaviours towards public space were extremely pronounced from 2020-22, and that’s what I wanted to address. It all came to feel increasingly urgent just a few months later, when the government’s ‘anti-protest’ Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was introduced.
One thing that really surprised me was how some people responded to the work. I had wondered if it might be perceived as vaguely threatening, given the wall of bodies it appeared as from afar, rather than a walk-through environment. It was the first physical show at the RCA in three years, and of course there was still some anxiety around opening to the public. But despite all the lockdowns and the isolation – or in spite of them, perhaps – a number of people were going up to the sculptures and holding onto them. I mean actually hugging them, and some for quite a while! What’s surprising when encountering the work, I think, is that the objects are not heavy at all; they’re light on their feet, so to speak. They’re in constant motion, responsive to touch, to other bodies moving through, with, among them. I’d expected some people might want to punch them, but not physically embrace them. Without wanting to romanticise that, I did find it quite moving (one iteration of the title I hadn’t accounted for); sensing in those gestures a form of hope that’s synonymous with solidarity – or at least a feeling of connectedness.
I was fascinated by the bag which was resting on the floor in the installation, the tension between these objects which hung like meat in an abattoir and yet suggest life at the same time - the prospect of the fight and the stamina needed within training. As an artist, what are you searching for within your work?
Yes, there are definitely multiple antagonisms at play. I’m glad you felt there was also a life force in the work. That’s crucial, I think – the potential for continuance, change, momentum.
I tend to think of the bag resting on the floor as failing or refusing to perform a given role. Because it’s not quite suspended, but it’s not fully weight-bearing, either; it’s only just touching the ground, and you can’t really tell that from afar. Maybe it’s doing just enough to pass. Maybe it’s exhausted. Or maybe it’s unable to perform the role expected of it. All bodies suffer in service to capitalism’s fallacy of exponential growth, while some are actively disabled by it. Perhaps all the bags are failing and refusing in their own ways. Even the red thread that runs through them is excessive, knotted, and complicated, like the labour that marginalised bodies are forced to perform in the very act of survival. But, as you say, they do also suggest life. For me, this is found in their difference and the proximity between them; in their ability to simultaneously create and occupy space. There’s transformative potential in that – whether it’s a picket line, a protest, a party... or simply a gathering of materials.
It’s moments and possibilities like these that I’m looking for, or hoping to create, in my work. It’s all part of envisaging new ways of relating. How might connections occur differently, without the usual power dynamics and modes of exploitation? How does one thing sit next to another – be they words, materials, sounds, images, or living beings – and what is created in the spaces between them? Do they collide, spark, change each other? What other configurations are possible?
For all the modes of collectivity imaginable, our vocabulary is wildly insufficient. For example, ‘community’ is often romanticised, even fetishised, and rarely talked about as violent or manipulative, which it can also be. The word implies so much more, whereas ‘friend’ often doesn’t imply enough. It’s stretched so far and so thinly to cover a wide range of relations, almost diluting the potency and radical kinds of love that friendship can entail. These words and categories have always felt somewhat elusive to me; non-specific and coded, often operating via unspoken rules, with invisible boundaries and unacknowledged hierarchies. I guess I’m trying to get at the nuances of these, to do away with the idea that solitude and togetherness somehow exist in opposition to one another. It’s ultimately a reimagining of space, because it does away with the myth of the internal and the external. It does away with the very idea of opposition, because none of these things are binary.
The materials that you engage with and use within your work are very specific - please can you explain the process behind these choices?
There are always multiple factors that determine how I work, and what with. Most obviously these have to do with time, space, and money, so choice is often limited from the start. I rented a little studio in New Cross for a few years – a long time ago now, back when it was slightly more affordable to do so – and I taught myself how to pour concrete, how to sew on an old Singer that someone had given me, how to work with various other tools. Like many artist’s studios, they were then bulldozed and replaced with ‘luxury’ apartments, so that was followed by a period where my one-bed flat had to suffice. I threw myself into reading a lot more, and started to write with more intent. I also started drawing more, which I’d stopped doing for a number of years. Later, I had access to an old football club which meant I could work on a larger scale again. These days I mainly have desk space, so I’m working more with film and audio. But writing and drawing continue to be the two constants, and they’re often starting points for everything else.
At the same time, the medium I work in is specific to whatever set of concerns I’m dealing with. I couldn’t have made The Movement as a film, for instance, because with film you’re bound by linearity; there’s a beginning and an end. That work needed to be open and embodied. Equally, I’m working on a film at the moment which couldn’t be a set of sentences or photographs, because it’s so much about the rhythms, overlaps, and transitions between voice and imagery.
Regardless of my circumstances, I will continue to be materially promiscuous. I’m not interested in mastery, and I’ve become increasingly suspicious of the need for control. There needs to be room in the making for mistakes and surprises, because those are often very generative; they allow for connections and experiences that aren’t predetermined. In a way, I don’t see all these materials or disciplines as separate. Of course they all come with their own histories; those are important, and sometimes they’re also what I’m responding to. But there isn’t a huge difference in how I approach composition – whether it’s linguistic, material, emotional, or digital. I’ll punctuate space or sound the way I might a piece of writing.
You engage with and return to layering and collage within your practice - please can you explain your process and why you choose this media?
Again, it’s very much to do with relations and transitions between parts, and not in any metaphorical sense. Or... never solely in a metaphorical sense. Sometimes it manifests as collage, where parts clash, bleed into, and disrupt one another, creating all sorts of tangents and productive distractions. Much of life is experienced in exactly this way – as fragmentary, discontinuous. This is intensified by the onslaught of sensory stimuli that we’re consistently subjected to.
Often, though, I tend to view my use of parts as being closer to metonymy, which preserves context and allows difference between parts to remain unchanged. This is a way of acknowledging that everything is already multiply referential and heavily contextual. It makes some of the groupings in my work feel more like paratactic arrangements, which can exist without merging and without hierarchy.
Working in these ways resists the coherent, singular narrative, and honours multiplicity; especially where contradiction is involved, and it usually is. There’s a lot of disorientation regarding subjectivity in my work; particularly in my writing, which focuses on junctures between selves and parts of selves. I’m interested in how we exist in relation to one another, but, crucially, how we can exist outside of that formula, too.
What are you working on at this time?
I’m about to finish a short film called No Internal Thing, which is a pandemonium of what’s usually referred to as inner speech, but without the accepted distinction between internal and external. It’s a dynamic landscape of sound and imagery jammed together in an attempt to explore the panoply of voices that occupy a single head.
After that, I’ll move onto editing another film that’s been shelved for a long time. It involves a number of actors, and we started filming it before the pandemic hit, then obviously had to stop for a while. So I lost the momentum with that, but finally managed to finish the filming last year. It’s also about language of a certain kind; it’s called Recital, though there’s no speech. It’s more concerned with the performative dynamics of speech – repertoires of adopted gesture, and non-verbal communication. The film will examine the roles these play in the production of self, and how they intersect with gender. Broadly speaking, it’s a montage of headshots involving some fairly dubious examinations of the mouth.
Photography by Lucio Martus
BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD - A SPACE BETWEEN ORDER AND HIERARCHY.
INFINATE FOLDS - Serpentine, LONDON. Photographed by Arnan Wang.
Confessions for Myself, 1972 - Black patina’d bronze and wool.
Malcolm X #20, 2017 - Polished bronze with black patina, wool, polished cotton and synthetic fibres and silk with steel support.
Braided organ pipes - re-tuned - to play an ancient future.
Ridged and runkeled metallic obsidian - raw prayers of ceremonial offerings
Synesthesia
The dignity of leaves - a ceremony to celebrate the forever fleeting - bronze bloomed with time.
Walking Angel, 1962 - Bronze.
Tender steps on delicate tread - patiently maternal -
Thorax perforated - winged lotus - a hand-cupped god of a dynasty long past.
Remembered in wet teal clumps of piled organs - heaped internal hot on the cold - an abandoned procedure - unfurling yet still beating - trapped between plates of rippled metal.
Bathers, 1967 - Aluminium and silk.
Time womb - aluminium silk - silk aluminium - a seat belt - cut - left to sway - pendulum and shadowing a trinity of stripe.
Giant knots - like hair - pulled back to prevent interruption.
A fountain of movement - mechanical and unrelenting -
A row of Gods - Luxor luxuriates - a drip of rust coral - the damn held for now -
Zanzibar, 1974-75 - Polished bronze with black patina, silk, wool and synthetic fibres with steel support.
Mouthwatering primal carnal - thickly Heavy Roman Catholic knots - tied - untied with exhausted abandon -
Uncontrollable red - gushing - with every heartbeat - behind a locked door.
Numero Rouge, 2021 - Bronze with red patina, silk, wool and synsthetic fibres with steel support.
The inner sanctum - hushed private - dignity dulled - in preparation for the next life.
The gold-rich and fervent - bodily mirrored ancient composure
Wood base - preserved
Brickwork rhythmic repetition in heavy metal - suffocates a tiny bed - for a bambino king.
Cleopatra’s Wedding Dress, 2003 - Multicoloured cast bronze plaques and silk on wood base.
Josephine - A generous grip of scarlet ropes - a mechanical arm outreached in a gesture of remembrance.
La Musica Josephine Red/Black, 2021 - Black patina bronze with red cord.
Barbara Chase-Ribound: Infinite Folds
Serpentine North Gallery - Until 10 April 2023.
Photographs: Arnan Wang
XIANGYIN TOM GU - A SPACE BETWEEN THE CORNER AND THE CORNER.
M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) meet emergent artist Xiangyin Tom Gu, LONDON.
‘Entangled Past’ by Xiangyin Tom Gu 2022. Image: Xiangyin Tom Gu
‘Have you read much Yukio Mishima?’ Xiangyin Tom Gu asks while reaching for a copy of ‘The Sound of Waves’ from the cloth-covered shelves of ‘Hatchards of Piccadilly - ‘the translation in English loses little of the power of the original.’
Tom Gu is an elegant bespectacled gentleman, born to another age, whose fluency in language - both spoken and visual is impressive. Eyes that dart and focus on the horizon while he rhythmically crafts his hypotheses - from a flow of cross-referenced texts, theories, and exhibitions. I realise quickly that I am listening to the audacious soul of an artist.
Currently studying for a masters in psychology after graduating from The Royal College of Art in 2022 - choosing photography as a medium to explore trauma in an installation titled ‘Entangled Past’. An imposing layering of printed Japanese papers - dominated the end-of-year show at the art school’s freshly built Herzog & de Mourn designed Battersea building.
A box of photographs were found in Tom Gu’s grandfather’s attic, ‘in the corner of the corner’. Image: Xiangyin Tom Gu
Please describe your graduation installation ‘Entangled Past’?
My graduation installation 'Entangled Past' showcased a triptych of an old archival image from my own family, in which my grandfather was standing before the Tiananmen Square supporting the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The triptych consists of three large pieces of prints, each sized 1.2 by 2.4 meters, intending to create an immersive space for the audience. The image came from a poorly preserved 5x7 black and white negative with clear traits of mold and stains. The anterior future, which one may call fate, laid in front of the protagonists in the image. Not to mention how contentious those times were in today's perspective, the elderly like my grandfather who went through the revolution refrained from bringing it up as a topic until their death. Drifting between memory and fantasy, photographs of the political events now serve as the mise-en-scène for us to travel through time and space.
The relationship with your grandfather is fascinating - in life and afterlife - please can you discuss his influence on your work?
My grandfather was the most important figure in my own family, both his presence during his lifetime and his absence after his passing played a significant role in my own growth. Before he died of pancreatic cancer, ironically, he mostly kept reticent concerning his own feelings and we rarely had much conversation. Yet afterwards, when my family was organising his heritage, a large number of old images were rediscovered. It is through careful reading of these archives that I came to know him in a non-verbal manner. Such abstract conversations which took place after death separated the living and the dead proved to be extremely deep and open. Thus, from then on, I put much emphasis on archival materials.
The wish to have serious conversations with the prominent figure within the family, in this case my grandfather, was never fulfilled. Such regret became the primary reason for my giving up on pharmaceutical science and pursuing fine art photography. Yet the division between life and death made the process of such wish-fulfilling a never ending dream through the reminiscence of photography.
There are many symbolic elements within your practice - including the ocean - please can you discuss some in detail?
The element of the ocean is for me the most important in this whole installation space. The ocean represents the fluid and the omnipresent. I wanted to express a sense of futility by fragmenting the frame of the ocean into hundreds of tiny segments. The nature that is also hinted at by this universal symbol then constantly reminds me of a piece written by Louise Glück in 'March':
‘Nothing can be forced to live.
The earth is like a drug now, like a voice from far away,
a lover or master. In the end, you do what the voice tells you.
It says forget, you forget.
It says begin again, you begin again.’
I deployed the ocean as an opportunity to blur the political aura given by the triptych work. Hence, in some respects, my space is also about conflicts and balance between polarised elements clashing together. The battleground between these seemingly unrelated elements is in the middle where the audience are standing, the gap, the grey area or the conflicted zone.
Roland Barthes ‘The Death of the Author’ is a reference point - what is your response to this critical essay and how has it influenced your thinking?
During the exhibiting process of ‘Fragmented Ocean’, I made the decision to allow the audience to bring with them back home one piece of the hundred fragments hanging in the air. Each piece was an individual segment which together with the others could form a whole oceanic frame shot with my camera. Through this act, the presentation of the installation thus constantly reformed and changed into various shapes and resulted in different chemistry within the space, along with the other work 'Entangled Past'.
Gradually, as a natural selection unfolds, the triptych behind the ocean installation was unveiled yet the fragments of the ocean slowly disappeared. This, for me, represents an analogy with how memory works. There is only a facade of being in control for the protagonist, in reality all perceptions remain in the end subjective. The way Roland Barthes inspired me through 'The Death of the Author' is manifested in here how I willingly gave up all authority as to how one should interpret or understand the piece. Between the author and the audience there exists a gap, namely 間 (ma), and it is more than enough to be with my audience together in this gap of limbo.
Time as a concept seems to be important to the work as a whole, can you describe how time has effected the creation and curation of the installation?
Back in 1966, when the great cultural revolution broke out and the relationship between the USSR and China froze, my grandfather was 25 years old. Today, as the artist standing in front of the life-size triptych portrait piece, I am 25 years old. The event occurred 57 years ago, which is exactly the age difference between me and my grandfather. There clearly is a sense of reminiscence and melancholy. Such striking coincidence lured me further to imaginatively impersonate and blend into the mise-en-scène.
Layers of time also could unfold in terms of the anterior nature of documentary photography. The unfortunate ignorance of our own fate which deeply cursed all us human beings could also be indicated by these harmless images. To look back on the photographs which could signify key moments in history, from this point of view, is another gesture of ironic salute towards time and space.
Tom Gu will present work as part of Hot Sheet 2023.
14 April 2023: 18:00 – 21:00 BST - 248 Ferndale Road London SW9 8FR
COMME des GARÇONS - A SPACE BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL AND PROPERTY.
A constellation of dreams at Dover Street Market, LONDON.
“A moment after the fairy’s entrance the window was blown open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in.” Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, 1911.
Puppetry in time with no strings attracted? - Trust blind acceptance - the exposure of ‘in plain sight' - Clown - Mime - Jester - Joker - Entertainer - Puck.
A slow unraveling, quiet volatility, resistant surrender - a breaking down - to reveal the internal within the traditionally tailored and concealed - raw wounds - inflicted or enforced? Yet never accidental - exposed, and ready to be frayed.
A silhouette rooted in the intimate, the nape of the neck, a neat shoulder, exposed wrists - a volume over hip - lost boyhood - the happy daze of daydream distractions - to resurface with a melancholy realisation of the present tense. J.M Barrie’s open window, Pablo’s blue period - peopled with the chalken tender - Wolfgang Amadeus tailcoats and baroque audacity - of an upside down reworking of a melody - replayed until satisfied - a shrill cascade of laughter - a pause of pleasure.
The granular miso-micro glitter sequins embedded into fine wool suitings - like flecks of the subconscious resisting the consumption of the darkness… or are they stars in a pollution-free sky? I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams.
Kawakubo timing is so precise - digital tight - sundial uncompromising - time-delay felt in response to everything else seen after - everything else is everything else.
The considered offering of 5 white shirts - seemingly similar cut from the same poplin cloth - but character different - who else would offer such a series when one will do? A sure sign that CDG dance to the rhythm of their own drum - an internal beat of clarity - an external opportunity. A certain enthusiastic cruelty that you cannot own all five - the wearer tested to decide - to react in instinct - where to wear - gaining speed to clothing the within.
And of course, there are those who respond with the immediacy of disdain - possibly objecting to the seemingly ostentatious - but that is also part of this Caucus race - removing the sense of selecting for the gaze of another.
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, 1911.
Comme des Garçons Homme Plus - Dover Street Market, 18-22 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4DG
Image: Spring Summer 2023. doverstreetmarket.com
Special Thanks: Mo Nan
CÉZANNE - A SPACE BETWEEN FATHER AND SUN.
A view of ‘a once in a generation’ retrospective show at Tate Modern LONDON.
‘Portrait of the Artist’s Son’ by Paul Cézanne, 1880, oil on canvas.
My eye was drawn to a few pictures within this exhibition - a feat in fact - when such a dazzling showing of images (80) feels overwhelming to behold - in fact someone fainted whilst I was there… unsurprising when seeing such beauty squared in the real.
Apparently, the signal in life to knowing your calling is through the passions you feel - and there are signals which patiently repeat within this exhibition - passions revisited - of landscapes where you can sense the breeze billow through your clothes, the sun warm upon your skin with that particular surprise that is experienced when summer arrives.
The artist’s popularity was not experienced early in his career and it is a testament to his instincts and will to have continued within a style that he quietly fostered.
It would be easier to surrender to the satisfaction to gaze upon Cézanne's work in pure wonderment, the prettiness of the views, and imagine just how sweet those fruits would taste, warm and heavy with juice from a studio table. My fellow viewing public was caught up in the nostalgia, I overhead many threads of conversation - remembrances of past holidays and long lunches.
Paul Cézannes’ family home: ‘Jas de Bouffan’, Aix-en-Provence.
A photograph of the leafy residence where the Cézannes lived feels like a daydream from another age, a time when flag irises grew plush and abundant - where the dappled green of a garden of trees filled salons with shimmering jade - that specific atmosphere is very present within ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Son’, where a young boy sits, composed, if, I imagine - reluctantly so - keen to return to that garden of adventure outside the frame of the painting.
‘Portrait of the Artist’s Son’ by Paul Cézanne, 1880, oil on canvas.
But there is a darkness to this exhibition that undercuts the lightness - tasting notes of the more complex persist - certain landscapes at times feel pure Hitchcock - devoid of people, all beating heat and unnerving stillness - and the still lives - are not as they seem. Where is the turning point for when all this visual splendor fades - a season changes and fruit spoils? A watercolor series of skulls suggest an answer.
The Three Skulls by Paul Cézanne 1902-1906, Watercolour, with graphite, on ivory wove paper.
A series of the artist’s tools are on display, including this watercolor palette - still containing the remains of Cézannes iconic colour sense.
The Tate’s exhibition title: CEZANNE - reflects the artist’s style of removing the accent from Cézanne when signing his work.
The EY Exhibition: CEZANNE - until 12 March 2023
Tate Modern - tate.org.uk
Special Thanks: Anna Ovenden
DAN FLAVIN - A SPACE BETWEEN FAITH AND FUSE.
colored fluorescent light - David Zwirner LONDON.
SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT: Interior space bathed in the fluorescent light of Dan Flavin at David Zwirner, London.
You can feel the works or ‘situations’ on display of the late artist Dan Flavin in the London gallery of David Zwirner before you actually see them - rooms bathed with the reflected light of the installations - which flood the spaces with silent torrents - light licks the door frames, pooling down the stairwell - even mirroring back via the steel elevator doors - like camp Rothko ghost discos - and the stillness is unnervingly tense.
The proportions of Flavin’s works feel bodily tall and statuesque - a vertical procession of sci-fi Giacomettis.
Dan Flavin untitled (fondly, to "Phip"), 1976. Pink, yellow, and blue fluorescent light 8 ft. (244 cm) high - Above image: Anna Arca. Courtesy David Zwimer.
The essence of a deserted city - architectural linear struts viewed in slow motion - a rhythm reduced to a single series of beats - slowed down to its very essence - and how that essence burns - Absinthe strong viewed through the blurry haze of the bottom of a glass with the muffled murmurings of ones self - alone in the bar at the end of the night before dawn breaks - like a Hopper painting - a depiction of the lone figure - the fallen heroic image of American ambition - bare, brave, brazen - the prowess of the Cadillac’s tale lights, the comfort of the illuminated refrigerator interior, the wonderment of Las Vegas.
Dan Flavin untitled, 1976. Pink, red, and blue fluorescent light 8ft.(244cm) wide Edition of 5. Above image: Anna Arca. Courtesy David Zwimer.
The glow of that fluorescent light - rich and full of life - sugar wet - gleaming off the walls - like the opaque lustre of dewy skinned youth - rooms blush with a sweet sinister knowing - the crude colours of a 1960s American Dream - colours that smile with perfect teeth and yet - somehow have no emotion - cherry red, bubblegum pink, sponge blue, spearmint green, lemon yellow and four shades of white described as ‘cool, daylight, warm and soft’ - all feel like the optimistic pre-packaged domestic stuffs found on mid-century supermarket shelves - created in response to a societies growing desire for ease, comfort and immediacy - for a low-fat, high taste holistic experience. Flavins’ work manages to trick you wonderfully into believing that - somehow we are not looking at ready-made - readily available lighting equipment bought wholesale for the needs to illuminate the domestic - rather his brilliance is in highlighting what we cannot see.
Dan Flavin - untitled (fondly, to "Phip"), 1976 - detail. *Flavin described his works as ‘situations’.
It is tempting to philosophically trace possible meanings within the works back to the artists’ faith and his training to become a Catholic Priest - choosing to devote his time to his ‘situations* as an artist instead of the cloth - how intrinsically linked light and faith are - the sacristy lamp - forever burning as a reminder to the faithful of hope in a sin-darkened world. The currency of electricity - giver and taker of life - silently powering our modern lives - unthanked and invisible.
Above image: Anna Arca. Courtesy David Zwimer.
Dan Flavin - colored fluorescent light - David Zwirner - 24 Grafton Street, LONDON - until 18 February.
Thank you Dr. Kyung Hwa Shon for the recommendation.
Special thanks: Shuyu Wen and Sara Chan at David Zwirner London.
LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE - A SPACE BETWEEN PAUSE AND PLAY.
‘Fly In League With The Night’ Tate Britain LONDON.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘A Bounty Left Unpaid’ 2011.
The first image I ever saw made by the artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was of a striding figure, wearing the embodiment of elegance - a white shirt, tucked into lean black trousers and worn with what I imagined to be soft suede dance shoes - this picture has since I first saw it epitomised everything I love about portraiture - a sense of the subject - an image which proposes more questions than answers - Like Henry Raeburn’s ‘The Skating Minister’, who seems to share a silhouette with Yiadom-Boakyes striding figure, both step out into a landscape of what appears to be water and yet are moments frozen in a state of motion - permanent in paint - ephemeral in action.
Arriving at this exhibition - directly after seeing the Cézanne retrospective, the parallels between the work of both artists quickly felt pertinent. In media they share the use of oil paint on canvas of course, aesthetically both apply pigment thickly, with impulsive brushstrokes - tenderly capturing the soul of their subjects - and as colourists both share a love for dazzling and emotive combinations, with expanses of shades which draw breath.
Learning that Yiadom-Boakye’s preliminary process involves found images instead of painting directly from life - a self-made reality collaged - adds to the sense of enigma that this show presents. The paintings' titles are equally fascinating - like tracks of an album whose lyrics inspire philosophical unravelling and personal loyalties like anthems learnt during privately pivotal times of change. Music in fact was in the air and in the paintings - with a specific playlist of tracks chosen by the artist - heard at the show's conclusion - an amazing sense of sound caught up within the brush strokes seemed palpable and metaphysical, like grains of sand found in Monet sea scapes - so I imagine notes to be embedded within Yiadom-Boakye’s canvas.
The portraits of dancers further evidence a metamorphic state of rhythm. Life moments on record, like camcorder movies paused, waiting to be played by a viewer boiling water or answering the landline - so are the paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - domestic moments mirrored in canvas - palpably poised - the intake and exhale of breath as tea is sipped and advice offered. A cross-reference is irresistible to Carrie Mae Weems 1990 ‘Kitchen table series’ - private and intimate frames with extraordinary confessional qualities.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘Penny For Them’ 2014.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘Few Reasons Left To Like You’ 2020.
As within television or classical portraiture, the use of the fourth wall - where the subject directly looks out into the audiences gaze is fascinating - particularly so within ‘few reasons left to like you’ - the reflected surface of the table which repeats the subjects folded arms and that stare, mysterious yet familiar seems somehow to offers a mirror to the viewer. Similarly, a direct stare is seen within the exhibition poster - a young child looking out from a background of green, with eyes which feel too young to be filled with such sadness or is that just the viewer's interpretation of their own reflected self?
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - ‘A Passion Like No Other’ 2012.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Fly In The League With The Night - Tate Britain, London - Until 26 February 2023.
Special Thanks: Anna Overden
DANIEL OBASI - A SPACE BETWEEN DIGNITY AND DEFIANCE.
“BEAUTIFUL RESISTANCE” FASHION EYE LAGOS - the first book by Daniel Obasi - published by Louis Vuitton.
RED HOT - No.32 in the ‘FASHION EYE’ series published by Louis Vuitton. LAGOS by Daniel Obasi is edited by Patrick Rémy.
The concept for this brilliant series is exactly what the title implies - one location seen through the lens of one image maker published by Louis Vuitton - The Maison synonymous with voyages of discovery - and a beautiful document emerges - an offering for an audience hungry for images and nostalgic for adventure. And so a library of volumes grows like dots on an ever-expansive map. 32 to date including Peter Lindbergh’s Berlin, Harley Weir’s Iran, Saul Leiter’s New York - Sarah Moon even captures The Orient Express - proving the journey can be as memorable as the destination.
Each are presented in line with the Vuitton knowledge of excellence - silkscreen-printed, cloth bound, equal in size and format - rendered in a double shade colour mix - like a pleated case from an Haute Chocolatier. A delicate inlaid image in gloss on the cover - like a travel sticker souvenir - depicting a moment - within the silent movie of stills within.
Daniel Obasi, the Lagos wunderkind is an exciting choice as a visual tour guide and ambassador for the Nigerian city. Obasi is fast emerging as a powerful voice within fashion image, as a photographer, a stylist, and figurehead for New Nigeria. An excellent choice for the ‘fashion eye’ series - ‘Lagos’ is the first tome of the image maker’s work.
Obasi’s vision is pure haute couture in photographic form - there are outfits of grand and imposing proportions, the hair, the hats, and makeup to match - and locations which contrast and contradict to surreal effect, like Blumenfeld, Walker even a little LaChapelle, he likes to shoot fashion with a capital F. But then he catches you out with the vulnerability of that rare, absent friend of fashion - truth. A golden-being breaking through the opaque waves of a swimming pool, like an angel caught in flight - or a lone figure, naked and defiant - waving an enormous national flag looking down on a city below.
Obasi has an innate understanding and appreciation of silhouette and composition which set him apart - he has a holistic impaitent vision. His pictures actually have something to say rather than a mass of general tick boxes, which arguably so many of current fashion images follow. How good intentions can so often lead to visual confusion. Obasi, in contrast, seems defiant and clear with what he wants to bring to the table, and what he wants to discuss - he cares about being Nigerian and he cares about the state of his country and culture - and he is using his voice - which breaks through the passive noise of modern fashion editoral like a warning light - seen on the horizon.
‘My love and gratitude goes to my family, my friends, and to every young queer Nigerian who hasn’t forgotten how to dream. In memory of the #EndSARS protestors who were murdered on October 20, 2020. We will never forget’. Daniel Obasi
Special thanks: Clara Mrejen at Louis Vuitton Paris.
JOSEPH BEUYS - A SPACE BETWEEN MIND AND HAND.
40 YEARS OF DRAWING - THADDAEUS ROPAC GALLERY LONDON.
Joseph Beuys - from a collection of 100 drawings on display at Thaddaeus Ropac London.
How beautiful is this space? - Somewhere between the minimal strict of the medical, a Kubrick corridor and something of a dance hall - all parquet or paved monochrome marble.
100 drawings by Joseph Beuys - the Grandfather of conceptual art and thinking - are shown for the first time in the UK. Presented in humble wooden frames on white washed-walls poured over in natural winter light - a collection from the Beuys family archive.
‘What is drawing? When two surfaces touch - a pencil line unwinds across the paper - it offers only itself - a line executed more by blindness - than evidence of something in the world… but this contact between mind and hand is evidence, shred, calculating evidence of a moment, when time and action unite - with minimum interference, minimal expectation, other than pencil on paper doing their most basic of tasks - to touch each other’ - writes Phyllida Barlow.
Barlows’ poetic introduction to this intimate exhibit feels respectfully on point, sensual even - private. My immediate thought was just that, these many fragments of errant thoughts, taken from a mass of notebooks feel Margiela-esque in their voyeuristic desirability - mysterious as the creative process is - the assorted mid-century stationary which creates an almost invisible background to the tender drawings to which they testify. The many pages - whose delicate edges are perforated with traces of the spines of journals from which they have been taken - books carefully pulled apart and reorganised to exhibit - a new order formed - a subtle reminder that these works were in fact from a series - whose original flow we will never know.
Notes made for the eye of the maker alone, graphite searchings, I imagine were never intended for public consumption - like any posthumous display of process - I wonder what would the artist think now? As an educator he probably would welcome the vulnerability of showing your ‘workings out’, the primary research stages of ideas - which were to evolve into more resolved outcomes later in his career. And there are little saplings of ideas here - sketches of hares, stags, insects, sledges, bodies, and the symbolism of birth, life, and death - all themes which the artist famously explored.
A wall displaying a series of drawings of mountains - feel particularly pivotal to the exhibitions course - these sketches are symbolic possibly of the artists mysterious past as a pilot, where he allegedly cashed into the mountainous regions of Znamianka in 1944. The artist was rescued by Tatar tribesmen who wrapped his body in animal fat and felt to aid the natural healing process - materials he revisited and used within his work as an artist. Interestingly these accounts have been questioned by historians and yet the hazy sense of reality seems important to the drawings - rendered with urgency - their line quality feels deliberate and searching, as if drawn from life - specific and yet also feathery vague - like memories or imaginings - the bleached white of paper - dazzling like sun on snow.
Joseph Beuys - 40 Years of Drawing - until 22 March 2023
Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, 37 Dover Street London
PRADA SS23 - A SPACE BETWEEN ARMOUR AND AMOUR.
A SERIES OF RUNWAY PIECES IN LONDON.
Unlined coat in cotton gingham with a hand knitted mohair triangle - From a selection of pieces from the Spring Summer 2023 menswear collection by Prada.
I find it hard to resist Prada, the name alone makes my heart beat faster, a style that protects while also invites - I think of that precise combination of elements - a design formula decided upon with the instinct of one pair of eyes and complimented by another - a language enunciated by one person and yet has been learnt by so many, emulated even - impersonated like an accent - and yet when you wear those pieces - all created with the knowing complexity of that particular point of view - there really is no replication.
The Prada aesthetic seems more exotic from a far, and yet when I visit Milan I understand more - because in fact these elements are not so distant from the identity of a specific generation of the cities residents - who do not, in fact work within fashion - nor I imagine care about it - an age of citizen who dress for comfort while remaining loyal to a certain mid century democratic uniform of task specific and weather sensitive - with a certain nostalgia of youth.
The pleasure of Prada is immediate - ideas so well realised in specificity that they are calm to the touch. The eye glides over their cut and form while looking for the particular combination of elements which define this rare species - firstly the colour - always so specific - reminiscent of that pre mentioned era while never feeling retro - then the fabric - again so precise - a tremulous language of touch - and of course the cut and construction - oblique in finish and yet such thought has been invested - to achieve that invisible quality which is more feeling than physical - more so when worn - where a mirror is not needed to know.
A single breasted raincoat cut from what appeared to be a checked linen table cloth has an almost ready made quality of a printed paper napkin - the immediacy of that pattern - triggers thoughts of a picnic blanket or table cloth - from a time I do not know, where an impromptu sense of the alfresco is worn with a straight face. Fellow gingham characters swing adjacently - cut out into a precise offering of raincoats, blouson jackets and neat shirts - characteristics of a gentleman’s wardrobe prevail with discreet intelligence - roomy raglan sleeves, wide top-stitched seams, placket fronts and pale horn buttons slot precisely through generous key hole button holes - all offer clues of cultural origins while the whimsy of that joyous check feels deliciously perverse in a time heavy with gloom.
And that triangle, affixed between the shoulder blades - this time hand-knitted in charcoal mohair - feels nostalgic even tender - a little amour - in an armoured uniform of now.
Prada, 16-18, OId Bond Street, London
Special Thanks Massimo