Detroit Art Review

Critical art reviews of Detroit galleries and museums weekly

Category: Sculpture Page 18 of 28

Susan Aaron-Taylor @ NCRC Gallery, Ann Arbor

By

On October 15, 2017

In Sculpture

Strata is Susan Aaron-Taylor’s work at the University of Michigan NCRC Connection Gallery

Susan Aaron-Taylor’s dynamic, charged sculptures, on view currently at NCRC Connection Gallery at the University of Michigan, confront the viewer like visitors from another world. Beginning with an image drawn from a dream or an astral journey (Aaron-Taylor is a student of Jungian psychology and shamanic practice) she curates a collection of challenging, specific materials into forms that utterly transcend craft. Aaron-Taylor’s sculptures are charged with an eerie liveliness- sharp, appraising eyes, extended claws, bared teeth, sensuous, bejeweled fur- and seem to exist in their own open-ended narratives, in which time assumes a dream-like quality, collapsed and overlapping. Susan Aaron-Taylor: Strata is a retrospective, encompassing different bodies of work that explore, from different perspectives, a channeling of massive power.

The studio where Aaron-Taylor nurses her visions into corporeal forms is a bright, warm space, part alchemical laboratory, part cabinet of natural curiosities. Leading me around her studio, Aaron-Taylor opens drawers, draws back curtains, pulls out boxes, revealing piles of glittering stones, cords of elegantly twisted wood, curls of birchbark, mounds of multicolored felt. Beginning with an armature of found wood, each form is carefully and lovingly built, of bones, shells, quills, beads, crystals, cacti, and a hand-stitched felt “pelt” into an incredibly powerful assemblage that seamlessly evokes a recognizable animal- cats, polar bears, water rats. These creatures feel both archetypal and individual. Each projects a state of emotional extremity that could vary from viewer to viewer- the half-reclined posture and exposed bones of “Guide,” for example, presents a puzzling paradox between title and content- power invested with touching vulnerability.

Susan Aaron-Taylor, Guide, Cholla Cactus, Shells, Handmade felt, Petrified Wood, Animal Skull, Banded Iron, 12 x 29 x 14″ All Images courtesy of Tim Thayer

Each clearly has a story to tell. Though they come from a very personal place, Aaron-Taylor is reluctant to reveal her own associations with her sculptures- she finds it more interesting to learn what they evoke for viewers. It is a tenet of Jungian psychoanalysis that each symbol that appears in a dream has a meaning unique to the dreamer.

The vivid blue dressing that surrounds “Water Rat” could be a ruffled skirt or a watery environment. The rat is depicted with her forelegs raised toward the sky in a gesture that could be read as despair or exaltation. The rat is clearly a mother- her body is studded with erect nipples tipped with shimmering beads. It’s an unusual combination of signs- lowly rodent and fertility goddess.

Susan Aaron-Taylor, Water Rat, 16 x 11 x 18″, Handmade Felt, Stones, and Stitching

The ladder that “Polar Bear” climbs straddles multiple worlds- it could represent a conduit to the shamanic upper world, or index a cage through which the defiant, porcupine quilled face of the creature snarls, depending upon the angle by which one views it. Either way, the being’s survival is uncertain. It’s elongated legs balance precariously on diminutive masses of ice that threaten to float apart in warming seas.

Susan Aaron-Taylor, Polar Bear, 19 x 17 x 13″, Wood, Handmade Felt, Geodes, Porcupine Quills, Cabochons, and Beads

“Tiger Teapot” adds yet another intriguing layer of imagery, being both a functioning teapot (it technically contains an inner chamber, lid and spout, though Aaron-Taylor points out that her teapots “can only really be used for a return to those childhood tea parties where what was being served was imagination and wonder.”) and a sly, enigmatically smiling creature mid-prowl.

Susan Aaron-Taylor, Tiger Teapot, 12 x 19 x 10″, Handmade Felt, Wood, Geodes, Cabochons, and Porcupine Quills

The tea service format ropes the ritual act, the gathering around vessels invested with fragrant brew, into the dream-symbol narrative Aaron-Taylor presents in tantalizingly vague, multifaceted flashes of insight. Expertly weaving the half-remembered visuals of dreams with iconic objects that resonate with ritual, Aaron-Taylor sets the stage for viewers to have their own experience of journey and revelation. With her incredible command of materials and craft and the profound, yet somehow light-hearted feel of her sculptures, she makes for a good guide.

Susan Aaron-Taylor: Strata is on view at Connections Gallery, North Campus, University of Michigan, from September 5 through December 12, 2017

 

Cooper Holoweski @ CCS Center Galleries

By

On October 8, 2017

In Sculpture, Video

Copper Holoweski presents Basement Cosmos at the College for Creative Studies Center Galleries

Cooper Holoweski, Cannibal Universe, Video loop with sound, 4min 30sec, 2016

The Detroit-based multimedia artist, Cooper Holoweski has a solo exhibition of work that opened at the CCS Center Galleries September 15, 2017. Curated by the director of the galleries, Michelle Perron, the exhibition is comprised of two large projected video loops that include an audio track and three sculptures that Holoweski made in collaboration with his three-year-old son, Cassius Oak. The exhibition space is painted entirely black to contrast with the two – wall to ceiling – video images, Cannibal Universe, and Food, Clothing, Shelter. These video loops of images contrast, as one seems to focus on the universe’s celestial night sky with a large variety of imagery and the other illustrates a short series of images from materials that are part of our experience in the natural environment.

Holoweski says in his statement, “One thing that tends to bind my work is a quality of “tension” or “contradiction.” In the past, I have used digital 3D modeling to create piles of virtual garbage. The idea being that 3D modeling is typically used for prototyping new objects; so the medium represents the beginning of a life cycle, while the junkyard represents the end. With the work in Basement Cosmos and my piece in Dlectricity I’m taking on some grandiose subject matter (the creation of the universe, the origin of consciousness, the infinite and the unseen), things that many, including myself, hold quite sacred. With some exceptions, I’ve generally used very banal materials and processes to depict these things. For me, this counterbalances the grandiosity of the subject matter, makes the work more inviting (and sometimes humorous even), and creates a bit of that tension by coupling the sacred with the every day.”

Cooper Holoweski, Food, Clothing, Shelter, Video loop with sound, 3min 28sec, 2017

It was just recently upon my visit to the Venice Biennale 2017 that I experienced video artwork that was an integral part of many countries exhibitions. I mention this because the popularity of video as an art medium seems to grow each year and it is within this context that I energetically viewed the Basement Cosmos installation. Tracing its origins to the birth of video art in the 1970s, it has increased in popularity as production technology has become more readily accessible. Today, video installation is ubiquitous and visible in a range of environments—from galleries and museums to an expanded field that includes site-specific work in urban or industrial landscapes. The only requirements are equipment, electricity, and darkness (for projection). It would be a guess, but the video work on display in this exhibition could have been originated in one’s basement and then projected on a large wall that amplifies the scale. Having a traditional art practice myself, all of this has forced me to better understand video artwork as a fine art, and where fits into the universe of visual art. The best I can do is to perceive video pieces much in the same way I see performance art: a fleeting experience, like a ballet or a stage play (that can be re-performed) for an audience, but not purchased to be placed in a domestic living room, but yes, part of a museum collection. One may think of video screens as a new type of canvas with moving images.

Cooper Holoweski, Cannibal Universe Video loop with sound 4min 30sec 2016

If you have a passing acquaintance with video art, you’re probably familiar with The Clock (2010), by Christian Marclay, which is perhaps the most hyped art video during that period. The premise was deceptively simple: it ran for 24 hours and was a mash-up of movie scenes featuring either a clock face or a reference to the time that was synonymous with the actual time. Other video installation artists include Pipilotti Rist, Cory Archangel, Hannah Black, and Ryan Trecartin. Some of these artists have a narrative; others are purely visual in their use of video imagery.

This review comes on the heels of an exhibition at Oakland University Art Gallery, where I mention the role of a university exhibition space, and now at CCS where they can pursue new ideas without a concern for commerce: a much-needed function in the Detroit Art Community, and acknowledgement of those curators who take full advantage of this position.

The exhibition Basement Cosmos includes three sculptures: Mobius Strip, Cala-bi-Yau Manifold, and Ouroboros Ghost Worm Eating its Own Butt and represents a form of eternal cyclicality. It is not clear how these works fit into the video displays of work and seem like somewhat of an after thought or perhaps humorous relief. Cooper Holoweski earned a B.F.A from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A from the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives and works in the Detroit area and participated in this year’s Delectrity 2017.

Center for Creative Studies, Center Galleries           Basement Cosmos, runs through October 21

Matthew Hawtin @ David Klein Gallery

By

On October 2, 2017

In Paintings, Photography, Prints, Sculpture

Matthew Hawtin, Installation image at the David Klein Gallery, image courtesy of DAR

In his Solo Exhibition, Matthew Hawtin Presents Minimal Abstraction

It seems fitting to mention that abstraction has been with us since the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky migrated his landscape to a purely abstract form on canvas sometime in late 1910. I always make the comparison to music, since instrumental music is abstract by nature—it does not try to represent the exterior world, but expresses in an immediate way the artist’s inner feelings, from Mozart to John Cage.

The David Klein Gallery opened the Matthew Hawtin exhibit September 9, 2017, with pure minimalist abstract objects executing perfected forms and pristine surface qualities. These shaped canvases rendered in primary/secondary colors, could not be executed more flawlessly. Some are on “torqued canvas,” others on fiberglass panels, all accompanied by a variety of exquisite surfaces. The copiousness of Hawtin’s invention, and his conception seem to allow him to explore each and every multiplicity of these ideas uniquely.

Matthew Hawtin, Stargazer, 45 x 45 x 19, Acrylic on Fiberglass paner 2017

Hawtin says, “Although each series has its own technical demands, they all live in aesthetic parallel that blurs the line between artistic disciplines. There is a determination to continually push the work forward through aesthetic variations, technical refinements and experimenting with new materials. Within this forward trajectory, there is an overall vision to create art that is ‘other-worldly’ and in a sense, futuristic.”

Matthew Hawtin, Cardinal, 42 x 44 X 12, Acrylic on Fiberglass Panel, 2017

The basic context for Hawtin is the color minimalist from the 1970s, including Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Kenneth Nolan, and Anne Truitt. The secondary would be the shaped canvas artist, revisited recently in an exhibition by Luxembourg & Dayan in New York, with artists like Lynda Benglis, Elizatheth Murray, and Charles Hinman. Hawtin’s work is a hybrid of these two concepts that fights hard against representational artwork and abstract expressionistic painting, with a large degree of success. The new works that fit into corners are particularly interesting and unique. These works, composed of parallelograms, diamonds, trapezoids, rhomboids, and circles, are reductively streamlined, solid in their color and simplified in their forms that, forty years later, remain robust and encompassing in an array of approaches, especially with respect to the surface material.

Matthew Hawtin, Working in the studio, 2017, Courtesy of Artnet

Born in England, and then moved to Windsor, Canada in 1979, Matthew Hawtin earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from York University in Toronto and an master’s in architecture from the University of East London, in London.

 

Bryan Graf’s Photographic images: DEBRIS OF THE DAYS

Bryan Graf, Interstates, Shortcuts, A Factory an Open Field and a Few Homes, 2016 c-Prints mounted with cleats, 40 Unique, 8 x 10″

In the second gallery at the David Klein Gallery, the artist Bryan Graf focuses on Photograms, one of the earliest forms of photography, to create abstract tension between text and image, in a variety of scale.

Photograms are images made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material, such as photographic paper, and then exposing it to light. Like drawing or painting, the process is like creating a collage without the need for scissors or glue. Rather, Graf has become highly skilled at controlling the process in the darkroom using color, shape and composition.

Bryan Graf, Chromatic Aqueduct, 40 x 74″ 2016, Unique Photogram and C-Print

Director of the David Klein Gallery, Christine Schefman says, “The photographs in Debris of the Days originate in a garden. It is a cultivation of ongoing works not limited to themselves, but rather a procession of generative images. Graf integrates his own gestural activity into the work by utilizing materials gathered on site as well the use of manipulations in the darkroom. His inquiry into the positive tension between text and image, as well as literary and musical influences, are evident in the arrangement of works for this show. His practice continues to reveal his interest in the history of photography and its relationship to design, painting and narrative fiction.”

Bryan Graf earned a bachelor of fine arts from the Art Institute of Boston and a master of fine arts from Yale University in 2008.

The exhibitions by Matthew Hawtin and Bryan Graf run through October 21, 2017

David Klein Gallery

Fall Exhibitions 2017 @ BBAC

By

On September 13, 2017

In Assemblage / Collage, Ceramic, Drawing, Paintings, Sculpture

The Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center kicked off its 2017 fall season with exhibitions in all of its galleries, highlighting painting, sculpture, photography and ceramic work.

Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, exterior, 2017

For a non-profit that was established in 1957, the BBAC continues to connect people of all ages with art from every part of the Detroit Metro Area.  These new exhibitions in all the galleries are good examples of how they provide venues for a large variety of artists.

The current exhibition in the large central gallery is an exhibition titled Simultaneous Contrast and illustrates how differently two artists approach figure painting. It is interesting that both artists came from the L’Anse Creuse High School program under the instruction of Ken Hoover during the early 1970’s and then went on to pursue their different paths in visual art. 

Christine A. Ritchie, Primary Passage VI, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 60″

In her painting Primary Passage VI, Ritche demonstrates her interest in process and the intrinsic qualities in oil paint where she delivers a loose abstract expressionistic interpretation of the figure(s). The surface, the brush-stroke action, and the moment, characterizes the way she renders the human form. Supported by strong gestural drawing the painting successfully communicates movement.  She says in her statement, “My work with the figure has been ongoing and is related to my interest in the qualities of figurative movement and the idea that there is a “shared” sense of the human figure moving through space that creates a “felt” or identifiable rhythm that belongs to and is uniquely recognized.” 

For this writer, the artist came along at a time when influences from the 1960’s, artists like Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning, were taking the art world by storm, supported by New York critics, Clement Greenburg and Harold Rosenberg.  But the language of painting the human figure as been with us since the art work done in the prehistoric caves of Dordogne, France and will be with us for some time to come. Christine A. Richie holds a MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where she lived and worked for 23 years before returning to a studio in Detroit.

Kip Kowalski, IGGNOIRANTS, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 38″

The contrast to Richie’s work is the Picassoesque figurative paintings by Kip Kowalski is dramatic, hence the title of the show, Simultaneous Contrast.  These satirical figure paintings incorporate a kind of surrealistic still life component. In the oil on canvas, IGGNOIRANTS, Kowalski dishes up a surreal one-eared female figure, a pear and a dead bird on a string with abstract elements in the wand and background.  He says in his statement, “My work is an audacious and blasphemous satire of human ignorance and apathy that confronts the absurdities I find in contemporary religious beliefs.  I tackle the biblical lore that is celebrated as fact over the findings of empirical science, such as the denial that evolution is real. My work is also a reaction to the pervasive attitude in many secular and non-secular societies, including our own, that women are the lesser gender.”  

Kowalski’s paintings are grotesque at times as he admits, in that it may cause uneasiness to the viewer.  Are these visual distortions metaphors for the imperfections in our anatomy?  In the end, most people have a visceral reaction to viewing a work of art as opposed to the intellect, directing them to say either I like that, or not for me.  I find myself going back to Picasso in this work, whose painting from the mid-1930’s, especially the women seated series, remind me that he was the most prodigally gifted artist of the twentieth century. So when viewing Kowalski’s work, I make an effort to see his measure of detachment, perhaps even skepticism that results in a form of intrigue.  Kip Kowalski graduated from The Center for Creative Studies with a BFA and maintains a studio in the Detroit area.

Russ Orlando, Modifiers, B&W Photographic image

In the Robinson Gallery, the work of Russ Orlando combines sculptures, collages, totems and a row of photographic self-portraits that portrays this artist as having a variety of interest in media and execution. The row of black and white photographs are self-portraits that stand together as one piece and seems to this writer to be theatrical in nature and not part of a body of photographical work. 

He says in his statement, “When I start a work, I tend to gather materials that I find may be useful to me. When combining the materials, I try not to make much sense out of my choices for fear of being too rational.  In the end, the work should serve as only a stopping point, prompting many questions but leaving them unanswered.”  

Russ Orlando, Untitled, Slip Cast Porcelain, Gold Leaf, and metal stand.

The Untitled work of these three birds, slip cast porcelain, with the interior of gold leaf is interesting, assuming they are not commercially made and altered, which would make them found objects. The base height seems right, but I would prefer more attention is made to the base’s top material: not plywood, but stone, or glass. Perhaps these works are like the artist says, stopping points, prompting many questions, but leaving them unanswered.  Born in Detroit in 1964, Russ Orlando received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Wayne State University, Detroit and his Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI.  As part of his Kresge recipient statement he says his work is informed by the lure of the sell, shaped from his many years as an advertising agency art director. His sculptures and performances-which he calls experiences-often employ his body as a flash point for social criticism and a viewer’s self-examination.

Rosemarie Hughes, House of Homage, Encaustic, Photo Transfer on Wood Panel

The BBAC has a Ramp Gallery that currently has the work of Rosemarie Hughes.  The smaller and more intimate work is base on a theme, The Home. In her statement she says, “My art is based on the idea of a home. I strive to create work that draws the viewer to take a closer look.”   Originally from the Detroit area, Rosemarie has lived and studied in Austin, San Francisco and London. She received a BFA and MA in photography but her passion for working with textures and a variety of materials ultimately led to her identifying as a mixed media artist.  She currently resides in the Detroit area where she divides her time between her studio and working as a licensed massage therapist.

The Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center is a model for communities through out the region to visit and learn how a non-profit can enrich their citizenry by offering classes, workshops, and exhibitions.

Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center 

Epicenter X @ Arab American National Museum

By

On August 27, 2017

In Paintings, Photography, Sculpture

Exterior, The Arab American National Museum, Dearborn Michigan, 2017, All images courtesy of the AANM

Epicenter X is a small exhibition, but as the Michigan’s first significant show of contemporary art from Saudi Arabia, it carries some cultural weight. Featuring works by 20 emerging and mid-career artists, this traveling show, supported by Saudi Arabia’s newly established King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, has already worked its way through six other venues as it travels across the country; future stops include New York and Washington D.C. Through October, Epicenter X can be viewed at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, a city famously home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans.

In the exhibition catalogue, Devon Akmon, director of the AANM and curator of the show, writes that although Saudi Arabia is a crucial ally of the United States in the Arab World, little is known in America about its people or its culture. Redressing this, Epicenter X seeks to challenge stereotypes of Arab culture by amplifying the voices of contemporary Saudi artists with a particular emphasis on the exploration of “urbanization, globalization, religion and the impact of American popular culture in Saudi society.”

Ahmed Angawi, Wijha 2:148 – And everyone has a direction to which they should turn, 2013, Digital Lenticular Print mounted on Aluminium

The exhibition features photography, graphic design, performance, video, sculpture, and painting, frequently delivering traditionally Arabic forms (particularly calligraphy) through modern media. While much of the art on view is clearly rooted in hundreds of years of Arabic visual culture, other works are emphatically contemporary, making conceptual, politically-charged statements on current issues like immigration, Guantanamo Bay, or the 2011 Arab Spring (its reverberations still echoing in Syria today).

Qamar Abdulmalik’s Asylum of Dreams, for example, presents viewers with a functional mechanical-claw arcade game filled, not with toys or plush animals, but passports from several dozen countries; they’re teasingly on display, yet, like political asylum itself, frustratingly unattainable for many people. The work is a poignant metaphor of the plight of those with no state-established identity– people who, as Abdulmalik movingly states, “are homesick but have no place to be homesick for.”

Qamar Abdulmalik, Asylum of Dreams, 2017, Crane Machine installation with printed passports

Similarly addressing a serious issue with understated humor is Musaed Al Hulis’ Ideologies for Sale, a vegetable cart ironically equipped with a prominent mihrab, the ornamental architectural element found in any mosque which indicates the direction of Mecca, toward which all the world’s Muslims pray. In this wry juxtaposition of a fixed point with a mobile pushcart, Al Hulis criticizes “cheap ideologies, seasonal beliefs, and lack of direction…toying with compliant minds, solely in the pursuit of power, supremacy and profit.”

Musaed Al Hulis, Ideologies for Sale, Mixed Media on Wood, 2013

Many works on view inventively translate traditional Arabic culture into a 21st century visual language, such as Nugamshi’s visually hypnotic “calligraffiti.” There’s a calligraphic work created on site in the show’s primary exhibition space, but a video on the AANM’s second level shows the artist at work on other projects, and his process is thoroughly mesmerizing. Nugamshi spreads canvass on the ground and enacts a sort of dance with a large paint-loaded brush (which looks like a broom), which he gracefully swoops across the canvass in rapid strokes while somehow maintaining absolute control over the subtle variations in the value and thickness of each calligraphic swipe. The result is something which has both the curvaceous elegance of traditional Arabic script and the raw intensity and large scale of street graffiti.

While Epicenter X is intimate in scale, there’s an impressive variety of media and diversity of participants (among the artists include a dentist, an architect, and a Facebook developer). The show comes with a helpful complimentary exhibition catalogue (available online), itself easily worth the $8 price of admission, but to get the most from the experience, perhaps time your visit to correlate with the culinary walking tours the AANM offers of the surrounding markets. Many of us too often treat the pan-Arabic world as a monolith, and in adding even just a bit of nuance and texture to our understanding of Arab culture, this show fosters increasingly-necessary cross-cultural dialogue, and serves its purpose well.

Arab American National Museum

 

 

 

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