calendario eventi  :: 

X

11/9/2006

Two Shows

Gagosian Gallery, London

Elisa Sighicelli: The River Suite

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present The River Suite, the second solo show of Elisa Sighicelli in London.

The River Suite is an installation consisting of eight individual video works. Focusing on the representation of a river at night, Sighicelli continues her exploration of light and darkness, space and time.

In the video projections of the left and right banks of the river, the camera travels in one long shot along the river bank at night; from the darkness very few lights emerge to reveal buildings and fleeting glimpses of life, which immediately disappear into blackness again. Our voyeuristic instinct is frustrated by the continuous changes of the image in space.

In the other five video works, the camera is fixed on a single detail of the river bank, a red building in the distance, a blue house, or a mysterious warehouse. Like moving photographs, these fixed images evolve in time, each passage is revealed by the shifting reflection of light in the water. The stillness and silence of these videos creates a feeling of expectation about what may happen but the suspense is trapped in a continuous loop.

The video Nocturne (Trajectories) is shot from above. From this perspective the river becomes a black empty space, where illuminated boats trace trajectories of light, hovering between reality and abstraction simultaneously. The work explores the edge of the image. From the border the lit boats come into sight, and disappear from a different edge, like in a choreographed drawing made out of light.

Fluctuating between stillness and motion, video and photography, Sighicelli's work scrutinizes ordinary things, in an attempt to make them intensely ordinary. In her work images are revealed thorough light; darkness transforms reality and allows the image to be open and suggestive.

Elisa Sighicelli was born in Italy (1968). Today she lives and works in London and Turin. Since receiving her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London Elisa Sighicelli has exhibited her work in a wide variety of public institutions including: Palazzo delle Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena (2005); Fondation Salomon, Annecy (2003); Centro Galego de Arte Contempora'nea, Santiago de Compostela (2000); MCA, Sydney (2003); Hertzliya Museum, Tel Aviv (2001).

The artist has also participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Milan, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Turin.

***************************************************

Franz West: Displacement and Condensation

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Franz West. The exhibition will include many of West's signature pieces, including furniture (new tables, chairs and lamps), collages, papier-mache' sculptures, aluminum sculptures and a new form of sculpture made of polyester.

Franz West belongs to a generation of artists influenced by action and performance art of the 1960s who rejected the passive nature of viewing and making art, as well as the ritualistic activities of the Viennese Aktionisten group of the 1960s/70s, who used the body to trigger cathartic experiences. In the early 1970s, West began making a series of small, portable sculptures called 'Adaptives' (Passstucke), plaster objects that were completed as artworks when the viewer picked them up, wore them or carried them around. In many ways his later works are versions of these, setting in motion a variety of bodily attitudes and positions, which transform public spaces into sociable environments for viewing art.

The colourful amorphous forms of West's new sculptures combine characteristics of physical, psychological and mystical worlds. Using materials that refuse conventional aesthetic connotations, West magnifies basic shapes and simple sculptures. In the new group of outdoor polyester sculptures, the artist uses a single colour to cover the uneven surfaces; with their looping arches and colourful forms these sculptures blur the boundary between art and bodily experience, and also between the artist and contemporary media. Such handmade, "anti-sculptures" reject traditions of the sublime and the monumental in twentieth century sculpture, and are works that the viewer can have a personal, physical and tactile encounter. West also incorporates furniture into the exhibition, asking the viewer to engage, sit and relax within the sculpture.

Franz West (b. 1947) lives and works in Vienna. He has participated in several Venice Biennials (1988, 1993, 1997, 2001), Documenta IX (1992) and Documenta X (1997), and has exhibited in numerous museums internationally including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997), the Renia Sofia, Madrid (2001) and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2003).

A fully illustrated catalogue, including a conversation between the artist and Sarah Lucas and an interview with Benedikt Ledebur, will accompany the exhibition.

Opening reception for the artist: Tuesday, 12 September, 6 - 8pm

Gagosian Gallery
6-24 Britannia Street - London
Tue - Sat: 10 - 16

stampa

permanent link