Category: art

Gabriel Orozco. Installation view of Mobile Matrix (2006) at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Graphite on gray whale skeleton. 6’ 5 3/16” x 35’ 8 ¾” x 8’ 8 ¾” (196 x 1089 x 266 cm).
the installation’s shape, form and aerial suspension are as interesting as the shadows it produces.

Gabriel Orozco. La DS, 1993. Modified Citroen DS, MOMA, NY
orozco cut a citroen DS into three parts, lengthwise, then appended the car’s exterior elements to the middle section. the end result exaggerates the car’s aerodynamic qualities.

“Dormition of the Virgin, Syros” by El Greco, The Onassis Cultural Center, NY

A ravishing gathering of fifty religious paintings is really two shows in one. The first follows the blossoming of an Old Master, the painter El Greco (1541-1614), born Domenikos Theotokopoulos on the island of Crete. The second traces an East-West mashup in Greek icon painting, in which the stately flatness of the Byzantine style met the more naturalistic perspective of the Italian Renaissance, influenced by Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian (in whose workshop El Greco is thought to have apprenticed). — The New Yorker

“The Coronation of the Virgin” by El Greco, The Onassis Cultural Center, NY

The show’s grand finale is the oil study “The Coronation of the Virgin” (c. 1603), painted as if El Greco were gazing into a concave mirror reflecting the vault of heaven. — The New Yorker

Anish Kapoor. Memory (2008), Guggenheim, NY

Memory is a site-specific work that was conceived to engage two different exhibition locations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin and New York. Utilizing Cor-Ten steel for the first time, the sculpture represents a milestone in Kapoor’s career. Memory’s thin steel skin, only eight millimeters thick, suggests a form that is ephemeral and unmonumental. The sculpture appears to defy gravity as it gently glances against the periphery of the gallery walls and ceiling. However, as a 24-ton volume, Memory is also raw, industrial, and foreboding. Positioned tightly within the gallery, Memory is never fully visible; instead the work fractures and divides the gallery into several distinct viewing areas.

The division compels visitors to navigate the museum, searching for vantage points that offer only glimpses of the sculpture. This processional method of viewing Memory is an intrinsic aspect of the work. Visitors are asked to contemplate the ensuing fragmentation by attempting to piece together images retained in their minds, exerting effort in the act of seeing—a process Kapoor describes as creating a “mental sculpture.”

[Third viewing area]

most breathtaking. from afar we perceive a two-dimensional black canvas. i was a bit disappointed that this was the third part of the installation. however, i was intrigued by the lushness of the black. was the canvas wrapped in velvet? as u approach the canvas, u suddenly realize that this is a three-dimensional opening, with immense depth. this is in fact the cavernous interior of the sculpture. as it is covered by light-absorbing black tiles it gives the impression of rich color and two-dimensionality. the installation beckons constantly. i had the urge to crawl into spaces around it, to discover it, feel it, see it as one complete structure. the third viewing area was most inviting. there was a line on the floor beyond which we could not venture. it was hard not to pop one’s head into the dark opening. kapoor explains that it’s more than just curiosity which compels us to do so. the darkness that exists within each and everyone of us, attracts us inexorably to the darkness inside the sculpture. love it!

Mon rêve familier

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
D’une femme inconnue, et que j’aime, et qui m’aime,
Et qui n’est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même
Ni tout à fait une autre, et m’aime et me comprend.

Car elle me comprend, et mon coeur transparent
Pour elle seule, hélas! cesse d’être un problème
Pour elle seule, et les moiteurs de mon front blême,
Elle seule les sait rafraîchir, en pleurant.

Est-elle brune, blonde ou rousse? Je l’ignore.
Son nom? Je me souviens qu’il est doux et sonore,
Comme ceux des aimés que la vie exila.

Son regard est pareil au regard des statues,
Et, pour sa voix, lointaine, et calme, et grave, elle a
L’inflexion des voix chères qui se sont tues.

Paul Verlaine (Poèmes saturniens)

My familiar dream

I often have this strange, engrossing dream
of an unknown woman, whom I love and who loves me,
and who, each time, is never quite the same
nor completely another, and who loves and understands.

For she understands me; my heart, an open book
to her alone (alas), is no longer a problem,
at least not to her; and when my pale brow is clammy
she alone knows how to refresh it, with her tears.

Is she brunette, blonde or redheaded? I don’t know.
Her name? I recall that it’s sweet and sonorous
like the names of lovers whom Life sent into exile.

Her gaze is like the gaze of a statue,
and her voice – her distant, calm deep voice –
has the inflection of beloved voices that have fallen silent

(Translation from French to English by Peter Low)

Saw Anish Kapoor’s site-specific sculpture, titled “Memory”. It is a 24 ton Cor-Ten steel tank, that sits tightly within the Guggenheim’s gallery space. Thus, the viewer has two distinct views of the work. In addition to that, a staircase leading down from the Guggenheim’s store offers a view into Memory’s dark, cavernous interior through a two-meter square aperture window. By this, the viewer has three perspectives he has to put together again in his memory.

Anish Kapoor was born in 1954 in Mumbai, India. He lives and works in London. The exhibition has been curated by Sandhini Poddar. The show will travel to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York at a date to be announced.

This video contains statements by the curator of the exhibition, Sandhini Poddar, and an interview with Anish Kapoor.

BRILLIANT!

click here to listen, then play.

seems from such a long time ago.

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins so I’m out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin’ with a loser and the cruise control
Baby’s in Reno with the vitamin D
Got a couple of couches sleep on the love seat
Someone keeps sayin I’m insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don’t believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin’ all your food stamps and burnin’ down the trailer park

Yo, cut it.

Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(Double-barrel buckshot)
Soy un perdidor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?

Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
‘Cause one’s got a weasel and the other’s got a flag
One’s got on the pole shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job
The daytime crap of a folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string

Slap the turkey neck and it’s hangin from a pigeon wing
You can’t write if you can’t relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax, fallin’ on a termite
That’s chokin on the splinters

The Sufi saint Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) is considered “the supreme genius of Islamic mysticism,” and has been called, “the greatest mystical poet of any age.”

As a young boy he showed all the signs of saintliness and his father called him Maulana, “Our Master.” By age twenty-four he was an acknowledged Master of Arabic grammar, Islamic law, Koranic commentary, astronomy, and Sufi lore.

But it wasn’t until he met his Master, Shams-I Tabriz, at the age of thirty-seven, that he came to experience the highest truth. Many legends surround this meeting, and they all tell of the dramatic destruction of Rumi’s books by Shams, and Rumi’s recognition that book-knowledge could not lead him to the highest truth. Rumi’s son wrote: “After meeting Shams, my father danced all day and sang all night. He had been a scholar – he became a poet. He had been an ascetic – he became drunk with love.”

But the ecstatic unity with his Master soon ended. Two years after meeting Shams – whom Rumi described as “the Beloved clothed in human form” – his Master suddenly disappeared, and was never seen again. Rumi was left with an unspeakable emptiness, and a grief that he tried to fill with singing and dancing.

It was at this time of longing that an endless cascade of poetry began to pour from Rumi’s lips. Thousands of verses flowed out as he called and called to his lost Beloved. In the end, Rumi found that he was calling to himself, that the Beloved he longed for was with him all the time. In one of his quatrains Rumi writes: ‘All my talk was madness, filled with dos and don’ts. For ages I knocked on a door – when it opened I found that I was knocking from the inside!”
(From “The Inner Treasure” by Jonathan Star)

My Worst Habit

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I’m with.
If you’re not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.
How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.
When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now.

Love Is the Funeral Pyre

Love is
The funeral pyre
Where I have laid my living body.
All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear, pain,
Have turned to ash
As I neared God.
What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew
Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels
And screams from the guts of
Infinite existence
Itself.
Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
Its body

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

(From “The Essential Rumi” – translations by Coleman Barks, with John Moyne)