www.list.co.uk/visualart
REVIEW PAINTINGS AGNES MARTIN (PART OF ARTIST ROOMS) Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 8 Nov ●●●●●
A late addition to the Artist Rooms series is a room of eight paintings by the Canadian-American artist Agnes Martin. The exhibition features late works, dating from 1994–2002, when Martin was in her late-80s and no longer able to manipulate the six-foot- square canvases that had been her signature size. But they have the same horizontal bands of luminous sunset colour, the same hand-drawn pencil lines and uneven acrylic washes of her earlier paintings, and her gentle minimalism, or abstract expressionism (the term she used herself), has the same feeling ‘of beauty and freedom’ that she had always aimed for. ‘I want people, when they look at my
paintings, to have the same feelings they experience when they look at landscape,’ Martin once said, and landscape is perhaps a very good way of thinking about these paintings, because after a while you almost don’t need to concentrate on the lines and washes and specific canvasses – just to share their space is enough. It helps that this room is marvellously complete as a space. Four canvasses face four windows on the opposite wall, and square panes glowing through translucent blinds are in elegant, resonant harmony with the paintings. There are eight square panels to the lighting rig on the suspended ceiling. It is a space of light and joy and contemplation, and after the noise and angst of Festival Edinburgh this Artist’s Room is a fine place to sit, think, and enjoy the view. (Lizzie Mitchell)
Visual Art
REVIEW INSTALLATION CERITH WYN EVANS AND THROBBING GRISTLE: A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Sep ●●●●●
Spectral sounds evolve to embody physical form. They move back and forth, as if spellbound, projected from mobiles consisting of circular mirrors varying in diameter. The electronic noise is the 21st century equivalent of trance-inducing Buddhist singing bowls. In polyphonic harmony, the columns of sound create a calming effect.
The installation, consisting of a white neon sign written across the length of the gallery and a mobile sound piece which hides speakers, is a collaboration between Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans and industrial music pioneers and ‘wreckers of civilisation’ Throbbing Gristle.
The piece makes use of so-called ‘hypersonic’
sound. This directional loudspeaker technology, called ‘audio spotlighting’, uses panels to emit narrow beams of sound that the viewer cuts in and out of as they move around the gallery space. At some points, the sound seems to be generated within the air itself.
Sounds and objects become interchangeable. The
mobiles (one side mirror, the other shaped like honeycomb speakers) hang beautifully in the Tramway space, reflecting spots of colour, tramlines, dark doorways and people’s limbs. Small particles of sound become nearly visible micro-organisms – swarming like electronic bees. Sketched in white light, the neon sign spells out part
of a text by James Merrill, writer of epic occult communications with other worldly spirits. The text seems fitting as it attempts to transcend this dimension and enter a realm beyond words: ‘. . . rinsed with mercury throughout to this bespattered fruit of reflection, rife with distortion (each other, cloud and trees). What made a mirror flout its flat convention? Surfacing when the stars alone like bees crawled numbly over it?’
Totally connected in concept and form, this numinous aural experience induces a sublime synaesthesia as we wait for the sounds to manifest in form before us. Poetically beautiful and radiant, this exhibition will captivate and liberate in equal measure. (Talitha Kotzé)
REVIEW SCULPTURE & DRAWINGS JOHN MCCRACKEN Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, until Sun 11 Oct ●●●●●
The comments in the visitor’s book are a mixed bunch, and if you don’t know John McCracken’s work already then they might help you gauge in advance whether you’ll enjoy this exhibition: ‘The emperor has no clothes’. ‘I agree’. ‘Dull’. ‘A very lazy artist’.
But if you like Barnett Newman and Callum Innes you may well appreciate McCracken’s output, which consists of large, shiny, coloured prisms, usually, although not exclusively, in cuboid form. He has received most attention for a series of pieces with plank-like dimensions, which he leans against walls as though they were part-way between sculpture and canvas.
As far as the emperor’s state of undress is concerned, I wasn’t unreservedly convinced. Sketchbook
drawings (all signed and dated) are covered in notes to self and/or posterity. ‘Clean, marvelous color. That is the vision I’ve had from a long time ago but keep forgetting. MAYBE I SHOULD FORGET IT.’ There is something compelling, though, about these ungiving, highly reflective surfaces with their
shiny names (‘Ace’, ‘Hotshot’) and racing-car bonnet texture, and they hold you so magnetically within their power-radius of reflection and fascination that it really does seem relevant for McCracken to ask ‘If a piece is blue, what colour is the space around it?’ It’s the attraction of the shiny, inexplicable found- object, clearly a foreign intrusion into its surroundings (visitors, gallery, Botanic Gardens beaming green through all the windows) and yet interacting with them after its own glossy, alien fashion. ‘Interesting idea: these are beings of another world transmitting themselves through me. Don’t ask
me why they’re here.’ (Lizzie Mitchell)
10–24 Sep 2009 THE LIST 89