SCULPTURE
RACHEL WHITEREAD National Gallery Of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 9 Dec 0....
If you look underneath yOLir bed or inside your wardrobe what do you see apait from clothes. shoes. boxes. dust and the occasional bogeyman? Do you see the space? It's invisible at first but it exists shaped and framed by its man-made SurrOunds. It is this anonymous space underneath and inside objects that fascinates Rachel Whiteread and informs her work.
Whiteread creates sculptures from space that bear the imprint of the object around or above it when it is cast. It's like making ice-cubes or sandcastles except a lot more sophisticated and grander. especially when casting staircases. Untitled tUpsta/rsi. a large staircase laid on its side. is reminiscent of an Escher painting. However. the experience is not to be a mental conundrum more a physcal encounter that acts as a catalyst fOi the stairs imaginary history and any personal memories or feelings it may kick-start in the viewer.
The impetus behind Whiteread's work IS her own memories. which as with everOne are shadowed by death and fear. Thus the work is cathartic. a
incarcerating them in plaster. rubber. resin and concrete. Untitled (Pa/f) looks like two sleek beds that you would find in the USS Enterprise's sickbay: they are in fact the casts of a mortuary bed.
Shallow Breath and Untitled (Amber Bed) are the physical representations of the space underneath beds. Looking like huge bars of soap leaning against the walls they instil fond memories of sleep and dreams but also sickness and death. Untitled (Wardrobe) is an old-fashioned
Untitled (Novels), 1999
and-seek and Narnia with night terrors of someone hiding inside.
Thus it is an exhibition of competing thoughts and emotions. One room of the exhibition houses casts of the inside a bath. underneath a bed and a shelf of books. all of which are black. The overwhelming feeling of this room is walking into a future museun‘ the arcane artefacts fron‘ this era lint-L: been preserved for posterity. They are beautiful pieces that eaSily ignite the imagination and highlight \chitert-zad's undeniable talent to engage and
kind of exorcism of her fears by
DIGITAL PAINTINGS
A WORLD PERFECT AT LAST: DANIEL REEVES
Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 10 Nov 0000
Street Levei's show of new work by Daniel Reeves is nothing i not timely. Almost all of these carefully assembled and digitally tweaked photomontages address a Single topic: war.
Reeves takes conflict as a starting pOint to examine everything from the close-up and personal — the artist appears in :h - corner of one glass plate. snapped during a tour of duty in Vietnam — to broadsides at histOry's Supposed
near course. tricks of memory. grief and loss. But there is optimsm as well as irony in the show's title. with what at first seems a deodedly cynicai. fatalistic world view peppered possibilites. as i‘ Reeves. like a protest singer. is shot-ring the world as it is in a bid to effect change.
The snow falls into parts. First. there are the more conte'itplative prints. like Keats in Korea. a prosaic shot of soldiers I". combat. their faces blearily merging with those of Keats. Menderssohn and Newton. a calmly disturbing image nintzng at a sort of collapsmg of time and ideas in the theatre of ar. The second gallery hosts large—scale images. backlit and mOunted on glass. These are almost lurid. nightmarish scenes. again featuring improbable confluences of space and tune. but this time more strident in their disavowal of the standard knee-jerk responses to conflict.
In the notes accompanying the exhibition, Reeves dubs nistony as we know it as ‘rather watery s0up'. His digital paintings are the opposite. cooking up a rich. endlessly thought-provoking mess 0th of distant and discrete events. tJaCk lvlottrami
Daniel Reeves’ timely nightmarish scenes of war
wardrobe that mixes games of hide-
intrigue. (Isabella Weiri
ETCHING PRINTMAKING FANTASY INTO NIGHTMARE: A GLIMPSE INTO JACQUES CALLOT’S WORLD Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 12 Jan OOOO
Sensation! Trauma! Apocalypse! As the Chapman brothers' homage to Goya has highlighted. the continuing obsession with shocking and disturbing subject matter in contemporary art is nothing new. In fact. the Chapman's inspiration might well be traced back even further to this seemingly quiet. academic exhibition of 17th century etchings by 'the father of French etching” Jacques Callot I1592—1635I.
Displayed in chronological order the Visitor can trace Callot's artistic development through the events which shaped his life. from witty. fantastical scenes of festivals and theatre for his Italian patrons. the Medicis. to sombre. disturbing images of war. cruelty and folly in the later French period. The historical context of etchings such as The Martyrs of Japan is provided by the Hunterian's excellent interpretative labelling. which is accessible and succinct yet scholarly and informative. The Miser/es 0‘ War series. gruesome enough for the most hardened thrill-seeker, are a sobering reminder that even the most organised. disciplined battle can quickly descend into unbridled chaos and disorder. A poignant anti-war manifesto chronicling scenes of murder. pillage. torture and revenge. Callot's Miser/es pro-date Goya's Disasters of War by almost 200 years.
Callot's innovative technique and inventive composition (The Fan), his mastery of Chiaroscuro in The Holy Fri/hill at the Table and his imaginative creation of spatial illusion are all remarkable aspects of his work. exemplified throughout the exhibition. But perhaps the most impressive work is a large six-part map The Siege of the /// de Re. It makes aerial photography look like child's play. (Susannah Thompson)
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Les Martyrs du Japon, 1628 (Ink on paper)
Art
Pl-IO TOGRAPHY a FILM TOWARDS IMAGOPOLIS Napier University, Marchmont Campus, Edinburgh, until Fri 16 Nov 0...
Dead Space - Obelisk by Leonora Olmi
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“\t .f “THE LIST 93