New York Postcard: Revealing the Beauty of Daily Objects

Art Life , Stuff Sep 18, 2017 No Comments

George Shaw returns with a series of art postcards from the city than can’t sleep…

Created over the past five years, the works in artist Wim Delvoye’s exhibition at Galerie Perrotin further his interest in revealing the beauty of daily objects through an exploration of art history, gothic cathedrals and nineteenth-century sculpture. To create a “new type of flying carpet,” Delvoye employed Iranian artisans to emboss the aluminium carapace of a 1950s Maserati, and had the motifs applied to other quotidian objects, as well. Referencing his complex oeuvre of Gothic Works, a 12-foot high cement truck comes and goes, as it spirals dynamically in space.

 

Maserati, 2012

 

Rimowa Classics, 2015

 

 

Fire Extinguisher 1, 2016

 

Twisted Cement Truck, 2017

 Although first executed in 1998, the centrepiece of Urs Fischer’s show at Karma, a haphazardly constructed wall of clay blocks on a foundation of loose fruits and vegetables, which are intended to decay and destabilise the wall during the exhibition, appears eerily timely in this year of global Trump outrage. As it makes its first appearance on American soil, Fischer further underscores ideas about materialism, transformation, fragility and entropy, by shadowing a still functioning nineteenth-century chair with a delicious, yet impermanent and ultimately doomed coat of raspberry jam.

 

Rotten Foundation (Faules Fundament), 1998

 

Rotten Foundation (Faules Fundament), 1998 (detail)

 

Midnight, 2017

 

Midnight, 2017 (detail)

Known for using assemblages and textiles to transfigure everyday objects into sculptural expressions, Beijing-based Lin Tinmiao transforms the main salon at Galerie Lelong with an installation of intricately woven rugs featuring thickly raised shapes in the form of multilingual words. For the past six years, Lin has collected over 2,000 words and expressions about women, some predictably derogatory while others have been “collected from obsolescence representing a nuanced mix of confusion, humour and self-deprecation.” Wall works in velvet, cotton and silk embroidery and needlework further the themes of the exhibition.

 

 

Protruding Patterns, 2014

 

Protruding Patterns, 2014 (detail)

 

 

 F + You #1, 2017

 

F + You #2, 2017

 

George Shaw

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