Legal alien George Shaw reports from New York…
Stefan Kurten, Midnight blue, burning gold
Stefan Kurten, Top of the world
Stefan Kurten, Undiscovered soul
The celebration of Mid-Century modern architecture continues with Dusseldorf-based Stefan Kurten’s new exhibition Running to stand still at Alexander and Bonin. Although familiar at first in their glass-wall, overhang-slab-roof architectural typography, each of the lovingly rendered houses is actually a complete invention based on Kurten’s memories and, no doubt, the odd magazine picture here and there. What draws particular focus is the densely overlaid patterns in somewhat unreal tones used to evoke eerie, unpopulated surrounds with mysterious light sources that create the feeling of daydreams gone horribly wrong.
Tomas Saraceno, Installation view 1
Tomas Saraceno, Installation view 2
Tomas Saraceno, Hybrid solitary social semi social musical instrument Apus built by one Nephila clavipes a small commuity of Stegudyphus duffori and six cyrtophora citricola sipiderlings
Tomas Saraceno, Space Elevator
Tomas Saraceno, Space Elevator (detail)
You’d expect a spiderweb or two even in the coolest of homes, but what about in a chic art gallery? With his show Hybrid solitary… at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Tomas Saraceno presents clear boxes with artfully created webs: as the spiders spun away, the cubes were regularly rotated to change their orientation leading to spidery configurations not commonly found in nature. Accompanying these works, architect-trained Saraceno has also built structures that explore the possibility of future airborne existence in ‘cloud cities’ within and beyond the “spaceship” Earth.
Philip-Lorca diCocia, Cain and Abel
Philip-Lorca diCocia, Iolanda
Philip-Lorca diCocia, Lynn and Shirley
As the American economy dropped to its knees at the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, Philip-Lorca diCorcia became angry at the irresponsibility and profligacy of its political and economic perpetrators, those who thought they’d never see an end to buying more houses, more cars, more of more. Begun in 2008, East of Eden at the Zwirner Gallery is diCorcia’s symbolic documentation of America’s loss of innocence told in a series of tableaux that create parallels between the financial collapse and the biblical Book of Genesis.
