16/9/2005
Simeon Nelson
H29, Bruxelles
Ornamatrix (for Sol le Witt), is a floor work that forms an architectonic latticework. The ornament is the structure. The reworking of a Minimalist grid in this highly ornamental way is a critique of the banality of purist abstraction and the tendency of such (masculine) abstraction to ignore more emotional, embodied (feminine) aspects of experience.
Ornamatrix
...the grid states the autonomy of the world of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural, antimimetic, antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature.'
Rosalind Krauss, “Grids†from “The Originality of the Avante Garde and other Modernist Mythsâ€
"The man of our day who, in response to an inner urge, smears the wall with erotic symbols is a criminal or a degenerate. A country's culture can be assessed by the extent to which its lavatory walls are smeared. ....We have outgrown ornament; we fought our way through to freedom from ornament. Soon the streets of the city will glisten like white walls. The modern man who holds ornament sacred as a sign of the artistic super-abundance of past ages will immediately recognize the tortured, strained, and morbid quality of modern ornaments."
'Adolf Loos 'Ornament and Crime' 1908
Ornamatrix (for Sol le Witt), is a floor work that forms an architectonic latticework. It is a crystalline matrix ornamented in a Jacobean fret. In Ornamatrix the ornament is the structure. The reworking of a Minimalist grid in this highly ornamental way is a critique of the banality of purist abstraction and the tendency of such (masculine) abstraction to ignore more emotional, embodied (feminine) aspects of experience. Ornamatrix is a feminized masculine structure - Sol le Witt in drag.
This work warps the small space of H29. It sets up an oppositional grid, offset to the grid of the space by 30 or so degrees. It becomes an awkward historicist anomaly in the crisp neutrality of this contemporary art space and questions notions of progressivism and relations between high art and the vernacular.
Simeon Nelson is a sculptor and interdisciplinary artist based in London
Current projects include Mappa Mundi, a touring solo show organised by the University of Hertfordshire Galleries, UK; Flumen, a major public commission Ashford, Kent, UK and Proximities, a large scale collaborative public commission in Melbourne, Australia.
For further information on his work, please go to http://www.simeon-nelson.com
This project is first in an exchange between Elastic Residence, London and H29 Gallery, Brussels
Elastic Residence
22 Parfett St E1 1JR London
http://www.elastic.org.uk
tel: +44(0)207 247 1375
email: info@elastic.org.uk
Vernissage: Saturday 17th of September 16.00-19.00 hours
H29 Gallery
29 Rue Andre Hennebicqstraat B-1060 Brussels
Gallery open by appointment