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VisualArt
REVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE & PAINTING JEAN-MARC BUSTAMANTE: DEAD CALM Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 3 Apr ●●●●●
Toulouse born artist Jean-Marc Bustamante’s debut Scottish show carries with it the weight of Dickens’ sentiment that, ‘There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.’ Bustamante’s ‘thing’ is incongruity in technique, perspective and context. This exhibition (named, slightly ominously, Dead Calm) opens with a declaration of intent with Bustamante’s late 1970s photographs of anonymous modern ruins. Ugly concrete bunkers, empty pits and half built spaces are photographed as if they were architectural wonders, these blots on the landscape, these objects of no one’s desire imbued with a cultural relevance. Nature and man’s intervention dominates this early work. Like the Monty Python knights, Bastamante has designs on shrubbery, he photographs it as if it were a supermodel – it fills the frame, but look closer and notice the intervention of man. 1991 sculpture ‘Stationnaire II’ is the defining piece in this section of the exhibition – 12 photographs are stacked in a concrete smoke stack, unseen and waiting to be unturned. In ‘Bac a Sable’, sand is contained by concrete, sterilised and unchurned by salty waters and ‘Bac a Sable II’ wood and the deathly colours of industrial progress become one. Only the haunting, seemingly archival plexiglass creation ‘Lumiere’ hints at the joys to come.
If downstairs is Bustamante’s past, upstairs is very much his present with work he has created especially for the Fruitmarket, and it is here that the lights are really clearer in contrast. While the sculptures on this floor are uninteresting experiments in form and material, Bustamante’s new ink on Plexiglass work is stunning. The artistic lineage and reference is all British here: Hockney, Hodgekin, Davie and Jaray. These bold abstractions are enough to still the breath. Alive with pantheistic allure and architectural connection, they are works that seem to ripple from willow to bank and back again. (Paul Dale)
REVIEW PRINTS WATERCOLOURS & DRAWINGS JOHN CAGE: EVERY DAY IS A GOOD DAY Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 2 Apr ●●●●●
With a title derived from a 300-year-old Zen Buddhist proverb, Every Day is a Good Day is a testament to Cage’s philosophy on art and sound. The show’s large collection of some 50 watercolours, prints and press-works were selected and hung according to a computerised programme version of the I Ching, or The Book of Changes, which Cage made constant reference to within his work. It was this 1000-year-old Chinese book’s method of divination and moral guidance that caught Cage’s attention in the 1940s and 50s when first experimenting with his music and compositions. The prints on display owe much to his Zen outlook on life, in that they are a projection of ‘a spirit of acceptance rather than of control’. With expressive prints playing subtly with a technique of tracing rocks with feathers and brushes or simple inky foot prints on burnt paper backgrounds, Cage’s jovial manner with his medium uses the computerised version of the I Ching to abandon his decision making process completely. His acceptance of the results is a modern and festive homage to the ancient Enso tradition of Zen masters: the painting of a perfect enlightened circle. (Alistair Quietsch)
REVIEW PAINTING & SCULPTURE CRAIG MURRAY-ORR Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 26 Mar ●●●●● REVIEW INSTALLATION MAXIMILIAN ZENTZ ZLOMOVITZ: RAPE ME Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 2 Apr ●●●●●
The first item that catches the attention in this exhibition by Kiwi Murray-Orr is the rifle mounted on the wall. It’s not a rifle at all, but a mahogany carving in the shape of one. It’s at once an ornament and a strong visual symbol of power and control. Two other such sculptures are here, one of them named in tribute to Florence Baker, wife of Victorian explorer Samuel Baker, crack shot and freed slave herself.
Each of Murray-Orr’s painted pieces is a series of
two or three horizontal strips of watercolour, piling black upon dirty yellow or lunar grey, or sunshine yellow graded into sandy red. Taken on their own, these offer resonant approximations of the colours and tones of a landscape horizon at varying times of day and season, with decorative aesthetic value. With the presence of the weapon-sculptures, as iconic and smoothly produced as commercial ethnic carvings, they become vague impressions of Murray-Orr’s home country as an idea, a virgin, unspoilt land before colonialism came to stay. Broadening the theme, the mahogany-carved frieze ‘A Breath of Wind’ – a relief carving in the shape of grass fronds blown by the breeze – seems an attempt to subvert the power of nature to the needy demands of art. (David Pollock)
With such an aggressive and punky title it can be assumed that Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz is looking for some attention with his dirty attack on aesthetics. Aptly named, Zlomovitz’s latest exhibition makes references to BDSM culture through his repetitive use of latex, spray paint and glossy mediums as well as the more blatant VHS pornos and printouts.
In pieces such as ‘Solveig’ there is a play off
between the voyeur and slave roles through the use of a cut out and suspended old dominatrix VHS- cover that hides behind a reflective foil. His use of mixed materials such as ‘solar protecting foil’ and wire make odd sci-fi references while the industrial steel scaffolding in ‘1991’ hints at the submissive relationship between Master and his PVC victim as two burning candles quietly drip wax. Like his previous show at Mary Mary, Zlomovitz
has returned to his use of everyday office paraphernalia in laying out a tacky blue carpet within the space, possibly in a sadomasochistic mockery of the office working relationship.
This show is, presumably, the boisterous expression of what Zlomovitz referred to as his ‘inner desire’ in a previous interview with The List. (Alistair Quietsch)
3–31 March 2011 THE LIST 121