SCULPTURE THE COSMIC VOYAGE - GEORGE WYLLIE Collins Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 8 Oct 000
At 84. George Wyllie shows no sign of slowing. The Cosmic Voyage collects together work, both recent and brand new. from prints to sculptures. that fairly fizz with urgent. optimistic energy. The busy show isn't short on laughs either. There are instructions for constructing a cut-out eagle. intended to be hung above the door of a financial institution. in which Wyllie presents a delightful potted hist0ry of the bird's symbolism.
An illuminated manuscript. signed by ‘the managing directOr of Universal Creations', lays out the terms of the Earth Guarantee. rendered void if daft things are done to or on the planet. And there are lots and lots of sculptures. Some are pleasing sight-gags. like “Blake's Bike'. a saddle with wings of inspiration: some are plain silly. like the flattened lump of something-or-other that Wyllie calls a splat.
Others are impossible contraptions. or experiments by a scientist with a science all of his own. Cobbles are given a chance to fly by the insertion of feathers. and stones are turned into radios by the plugging-in of headphones. An arrow. connected to a tree by a thick red thread. can even. with the addition of a quivering horse. be used to track the passage of souls departing their bodies. These three themes - flight. communication and shamanistic practices. which might well be three sides to the same impossible coin — tie the peculiar collection of contraptions together. adding a healthy dose of weight to a show that. at times. threatens to become too whimsical to bear. (Jack Mottram)
Boots of Icarus
Visual Art
SCULPTURE
JANNIS KOUNELLIS: WORKS 1958-2005 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Tue 8 Jan; Edinburgh College of Art, until Sun 18 Sep 0.”.
Spread over two venues simply to accommodate the sheer size of many works, this first ever Scottish retrospective of one of Italy’s most important post-war artists is well worth the between- site walk required.
Kounellis was born in Greece and educated in Rome, and her work is trademarked by a shaping of man-made objects and materials into an almost elemental arrangement. Each work is untitled but, for its breath-sapping impact upon both first glance and closer inspection, the piece at Edinburgh College of Art is possibly the most essential.
Featuring an assemblage of riveted steel girders which appear to march or flow across a floor carpeted with fragile Eastern rugs, it impresses both with the scale of its production and the starkness of the industrial metaphor. Closer viewing also reveals a black hat and coat hanging from a meathook atop one girder - whether as embodiment of the dark and crushing forces represented or some hint of humanity, it’s hard to decide.
At the SNGMA, meanwhile, the larger works also carry the most impact. The piece which was commissioned for this show, a similarly painstaking assemblage of coloured glass chunks hanging by steel wires from more girders, is particularly impressive. The arrangement of these once again throws up Kounellis’ contrasting of beauty enchained by ugliness, but this time adds a third dimension - the huge space of the room beyond this jagged curtain.
Certain other thematic devices emerge throughout the show, such as the burlap sacks used by poor traders in Kounellis’ fishing port home of Piraeus, signs painted with the simple words BAR and TABBACHI, and household objects like scissors and toy trains. All represent the Arte Povera movement which Kounellis helped found, yet reveal themselves to be anything but poor in conceptual precision. (David Pollock)
INSTALLATION AND PAINTING MATTS LEIDERSTAIVI DCA, Dundee, until Sun 25 Sep 00
Matts Leiderstam's Grand Tour presents slides. textbooks and copies of paintings by Courbet. Canaletto and Piranesi for our perusal. By viewing images taken from catalogues that examine the 18th century Grand Tour of Europe juxtaposed with information about cruising grounds from the Spartacus International Gay Guide. we discover that we haven't really changed that much: posh folk like slumming it and artists still enjoy looking at landscapes and genitals.
Leiderstam's observation that art and sex are full of “hidden meanings' is trite; the idea that there are ‘secret codes' in both. waiting to be deciphered. is eVIdence of the artist's unchecked positiwst and structuralist proclivities. The sharp end of 15 years of iconoclastic queer theory pricked that flaccid balloon. surely. Categories. signs and histories have blurred into something far more interesting than Lei(,l(~;-rstam's art lear s us to believe. Some of the figures in his copies of reproductions turn to look at you. but you won't look back too intensely — erotic art has been sanitised by Leiderstam's scientific bent. There is a lack of finesse in many of the untitled paintings -- painting is not his forte. The juiCy translucent slides of the works are more seductive. but make the canvases seem even more superfluous. (Alexander Kennedy)
8—22 Sep 200:3 THE LIST 89