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20/3/2007

Three Exhibitions

David Zwirner, New York

Gordon Matta-Clark and Rirkrit Tiravanija

Gordon Matta-Clark, a key figure in the activity and growth of the New York art world from the late 1960s until his death in August, 1978, was heavily inspired by the dematerialization movement of the late 1960s. Perhaps best known for his architectural "cuttings" - sculptures made from slices of buildings slated for demolition - Matta-Clark was co-founder of FOOD in 1971, a functioning restaurant that employed artists and hosted art/food performances. He also helped Jeffrey Lew establish 112 Greene Street (now White Columns), the first alternative gallery in New York with an open exhibition program.

Featured in this exhibition will be a recreation of Open House, 1972, a work that, like much of Matta-Clark's oeuvre, applies new meaning to abandoned and commonplace materials through the act of recycling. Originally located in the street outside 89 Greene Street (a second version was later installed outside 112 Greene Street), the dumpster held architectural fragments and construction-site detritus and was featured in Matta-Clark's film of the same year, also titled Open House. In the film, the dumpster is converted into a makeshift living environment for the homeless. Made to function (physically and conceptually) outside of the commercial gallery system, and thus a critique of the value of art and commercial real estate, Open House represents Matta-Clark's career-long desire to create a new way of seeing through the transformation of discarded objects into new works of art.

Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled 1992 (Free), was originally exhibited at 89 Greene Street in the former 303 Gallery space in 1992. 303 Gallery was on the second floor at 89 Greene Street, just a few feet from Matta-Clark's Open House site. In that exhibition, Tiravanija took the contents of the entire gallery - kitchen, storeroom, bathroom and office - and publicly deposited/displayed them in the main gallery space. In what had been the gallery office, he set up a provisional kitchen where Thai curry was cooked and served to visitors. Taking his historical cues not only from distinctly non-Western Thai traditions, but also from Alan Kaprow, Michael Asher, and Matta-Clark, Tiravanija's seminal exhibition helped create a pivitol moment of rupture from the wealth and abundance of the previous decade. For this exhibition, Tiravanija will make a ghost of the 89 Greene Street space in plywood. The kitchen - which will include the same stools, table s, cookers, pots, pans, and refrigerator, along with the same 15-year old food waste - will be used and shown in what will be the "office." Untitled 1992 (Free) will also be exhibited.

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James Welling

Opening on March 21, 2007, David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new photographs by Los Angeles-based artist James Welling. In 2006, Welling was included in group exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY; and P.S.1, Long Island City, NY. His exhibition Agricultural Works, a project sponsored by Minetta Brook, was recently exhibited at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY (2006). The exhibition James Welling – Flowers, 2005 is on display at The Horticultural Society of New York on W. 37th Street, 13th Floor, from March 23 through June 22, 2007. This will be Welling’s second solo exhibition at David Zwirner and will include selections from three recent bodies of work: Flowers, Hexachromes, and Authors. For the past 5 years, James Welling has explored the phenomena of color: its material presence as layers of dyes on a sheet of photo paper; its perceptual existence in the eyes of the viewer; and its symbolic place in both personal and historical contexts. This exhibition documents Welling’s most recent investigation of color.

In the Hexachrome series, Welling points to the additive process of vision (the red, green and blue receptors of the human eye) by repeatedly exposing a single frame of film using different colored filters. Here, not only does he raise the analogy of vision, but he also brings temporality into his photography. By making multiple exposures on the same piece of film, over an extended period, Welling records the passage of time in the form of brightly colored shadows as they moved across groups of succulents. In Flowers, Welling continues to work with photograms of flowers, a project he began in 2004. The most recent Flowers are larger in scale and have a greater range of colors than those in past works. To produce these works, Welling placed small, irregularly-shaped color filters behind the negative as he printed the images. In an interview with the artist, novelist/critic Lynne Tillman notes that these flowers “argue for a present-ness of the photograph.” Rather than pointing to a specific moment in the past, these nearly-abstract images encourage the viewer to discover new meanings while in the presence of the work.

In the third series on display, Authors, Welling looks to the distant past. His fascination with the 19th century has been apparent since his earliest photographs, and here he names the nine photographs in the series after 19th-century writers – Alcott, Dickenson, Emerson, Fuller, and Whitman among them. He is also mining his past by using negatives he made in the 1980s, but now printing them in negative, with colors which, for him, symbolize the 19th century. The common denominator in these three bodies of work is Welling’s interest in the fundamentally artificial and arbitrary nature of color. From the psychedelic Hexachromes to the ethereal Flowers to the elegiac Authors, Welling presents an idea of photography liberated from an indexical connection to the subject. His work seeks to alter the existing world, not by digitally recreating it but by asserting that it is the photographer’s prerogative to make photographs rather than merely to take them.

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Yutaka Sone

Opening on March 21, 2007, David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Los Angelesbased artist Yutaka Sone. Sone was the subject of the seminal exhibition Yutaka Sone: Jungle Island at the MOCA, Los Angeles, CA (2003). In 2002, he had a solo show entitled Travel to Double River Island at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota City, Japan. In addition, Sone has participated in several major biennials, including the Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2004), The 25th Biennal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2002), 13th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2002), the Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2001), and Yokohama 2001: International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Yokohama, Japan (2001). In 2003, he represented his native Japan in La Bienale di Venezia, Venice, Italy.

In September, 2006, Sone’s sculpture It Seems Like Snow Leopard Island inaugurated David Zwirner’s new space at 519 West 19th Street. The sculpture was previously featured in Sone’s solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern in Bern, Switzerland – the largest European presentation of the artist’s work to date and the third in a trilogy of exhibitions including Yutaka Sone: X-Art Show at the Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, CO and Yutaka Sone Forecast: Snow at The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (all 2006). This exhibition will be Sone’s third solo show at the gallery.

Yutaka Sone’s work encompasses painting, drawing, performance, sculpture, and video. From tiny crystal snowflakes to major works in marble, he is inspired by landscape; more specifically, snowy outdoor scenes. Many of his installations include live trees or plants, which, when interspersed with paintings, drawings, and sculptures, completely alter traditional gallery and museum exhibition spaces. Other prevalent themes are amusement, motion, play and desire, which in past works have taken the form of roller coasters, the island of Hong Kong, and highway interchanges carved in pure white marble. In a range of diverse media, Sone explores his love of nature, and in particular snow and skiing, by emphasizing the individuality of natural forms through his choice of materials.

Reflecting and absorbing the light, and fluctuating between solid and ephemeral, Sone’s works in crystal and marble are clearly celebratory; in a sense they represent a perfect place or mindset while leaving much to the imagination. In his two-dimensional works, Sone further expores this ideal place within which particular moments may be captured: the habitat of the snow leopard, weather conditions, schematics of snowflakes, foliage, and mountains. In his installations, which are often intuitively constructed, Sone brings works in a range of media together to create environments that border on dreamscapes or fantasy worlds. For this exhibition, Sone has created several new, hand-carved crystal snowflakes, ranging in size from six by six inches to nearly two by two feet in diameter, carved from single pieces of crystal in his studio in China. Each flake is, like those found in nature, unique – this aspect is reflected in their collective title, Every Snowflake Has a Different Shape. Also on display will be Ski Lift, a large-scale, carved marble sculpture depicting a highly-detailed ski lift surrounded by snow-covered trees. On the walls will be new paintings and drawings that further the artist’s conceptual journey towards what he refers to as an “unreachable place.” In all of his works, Sone attempts to reveal the exquisite and the ephemeral – qualities that allude to our paradoxical relationship with nature.

Opening: Wednesday, March 21, 6:00PM - 8:00PM

David Zwirner
19th Street - New York
Free admission

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