www.list.co.uk/visualart
REVIEW INSTALLATION PIETRO FORTUNA: GLORY Tramway, Glasgow, until Sun 12 Sep ●●●●●
Using the laden concept of the piazza, Italian artist Pietro Fortuna has recreated an open public area within Tramway’s main gallery as part of his month-long residency. Large-scale cardboard constructions, the shape of blown up architectural models for inner city building plans, have been placed around the space. Like faceless architecture, these cardboard façades make it look like a vast, timeless blueprint for a non-space, emphasising the surrounding emptiness. Fortuna explains his concept as
examining the idea that community can locate itself in the simple sharing of a place, giving the impression that open space can be apolitical. But surely all space is created within a web of social nodes. The nondescript cardboard installation jars with his series of religious motifs, which reinforce an ideological ground. There is no such thing as a simple sharing of space – even heaven has no clean slate.
The artist invited various groups, all with existing links to Tramway, to interact with his piazza. During the opening event, and as a public culmination of a two-week exploration, poets, gardeners, students from the portfolio class, local church-goers and ten artists from the Ironbbratz group, gathered for a performance. Later in the month Ironbbratz, a collective based in the Merchant city, will do a show in response to this event, inviting all the participants, with the intention to expand on Fortuna’s idea with their own interpretation of the piazza in its modern-day guise. (Talitha Kotzé)
Visual Art
REVIEW PAINTING RICHARD WRIGHT Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 23 Oct ●●●●● It’s alluring and unsettling, with subtle knife in hand, to stand before the thinly painted gouache veneer that separates these two lands. Stretched out before you, wall to wall, and ceiling to floor, is a wavering sea of blue lines forming patterns that advance and recede. This constellation is no mere op art, rather it is the manifestation of an intention that has taken on a joie de vivre of its own. It did not come with factory printed stencil-to-wall installation instructions, neither does each look the same: uniquely hand painted, every shape has been outlined and filled with the same blue pigment – revealing a range of different densities from opaque to translucent shades, and sketching out an obscure trompe l’oeil. Reminiscent of those ‘magic pictures’, resting your eyes on the picture plane conjures up undefined awe – you may see green diamonds or red outlines in the flash of a blink. A few subtle changes in the overall pattern play tricks on
your eyes, and splashes of paint on both ceiling and floor reference the artist’s hand. A pot of blue paint, a tiny brush and many hours later
the far wall of the gallery is transformed into a portal. Quieting down what many artists try to speed up, and letting go when it is time to depart, the artist will leave no trace behind: the mural will be painted over and a new one cultivated elsewhere. Like a Japanese garden it is only as good as the careful maintenance that it receives by those skilled in the art of pruning. Richard Wright has given us as much time and intention as he has pigment on the wall. He has no intention of contributing to the unnecessary clutter of our world, instead his work elicits a nostalgia for psychedelia in the old fashioned sense of the word. His exhibition taps into our base memory of archetypal yearning for liberating a creative profusion of the mind from its ostensibly ordinary fetters. Dressed in a different guise in the 21st century, the work’s complex simplicity is surprisingly refreshing. (Talitha Kotzé)
REVIEW PAINTING CHRISTEN KØBKE National Galleries Complex, Edinburgh, until Sun 3 Oct ●●●●●
This bite-sized display of around 40 paintings by 17th century Danish painter Christen Købke offers an accessible and contextualised perspective on his work. In the face of the National Galleries’ other blockbusting survey exhibits, which soar and sweep through impressionism and surrealism, trawling through hundreds of artists, opinions, offshoots and undercurrents, it is a real treat to devour a show as singular as this. A contemporary of celebrated writer Hans Christian Anderson and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, although now nationally revered, Købke enjoyed little recognition during his lifetime. Accordingly, this historical tack not only acknowledges that the artist’s ideas were synonymous with the Golden Danish Age, but the greatness of the artist’s ahead-of-his-time outlook. Far too modern for his own good, Købke’s fine draughtmanship, his ability to find an ideal in the ordinariness of the real, and commitment to exploring alternative painterly perspectives, demark the individuality of this now-significant Danish figure.
As with other historical hangs of work, it is difficult to tune-out from all-knowing
accompanying labels and over-arching personal narratives. However, these pastoral scenes, portraits and surprising depictions of national monuments draw the viewer in for a close examination of deftly manipulated detail and a rendering of warm light entirely unknown to most UK audiences. Poised and oddly off-centre, although it utterly makes sense, it is difficult to accept that he painted only from nature, and this is where Købke’s brilliance lies: in his timeless ability to animate everyday subjects with an otherworldly substance. (Rosalie Doubal)
9–23 Sep 2010 THE LIST 91