VisualArt
REVIEW PRINTS & SCULPTURE GRIER EDMUNDSON: ‘SOMETIMES I AM CONTENT’ Kendall Koppe, Glasgow, until Sat 7 May ●●●●●
There’s a new gallery in town. Located on Dixon Street, and overlooking the Clyde, Kendall Koppe’s gallery is situated in a beautifully converted space. The renovation acknowledges some of the interior’s original features in contrast to its sleek new walls and shiny new floor. Koppe, who previously headed Washington Garcia Gallery, will now represent four artists: Niall Macdonald, Ciara Phillips, Corin Sworn and Grier Edmundson. The inauguration showcases a solo exhibition by Edmundson.
We take our cue from a cubed mirror block precariously balanced on a corner, its three angles reflect, simultaneously, part wall, part painting, part floor. The walls have been lined with hand-printed wallpaper featuring a young Ronald Reagan as gunslinger in a Western before his time in the White House. The single iconic image is screenprinted on newsprint and repeated to form a monochromatic patterned backdrop against which a series of oil paintings are displayed. A lark is confronted with its own reflection, a sleeping boy in the hay has been replicated (twice) from an original work by Swiss realist painter Albert Anker. The theme here is of reconstruction and representation, but it is also about looking, perhaps spotting discrepancies, and the pleasing sensation of it all being well executed by this Memphis-born artist.
It is the juxtaposition and appropriation of familiar and
obscure images that make Grier Edmundson’s work intriguing to look at. Here the repeated mass printed image takes a step out of the limelight. Rather the artist employs it as guide, an optical safety net, for us to experience the haptic qualities of the delicately painted works placed on top of it. Ultimately, the images in the show shed their responsibility as singular objects, and their repetition brings comfort, even contentment. (Talitha Kotzé)
REVIEW SCULPTURE & PRINTS JONATHAN OWEN Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 14 May ●●●●● REVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE & OBJECTS ARTIST ROOMS: JEFF KOONS Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, until Sun 3 Jun ●●●●●
The nutcracker suite of small carved figures that form the modest centrepiece of Jonathan Owen’s discreet boudoir of a show appear to be hiding from themselves. The top half of one’s head is a fragile cage with a perfectly centred nut where the brain should be.
Another nut, this time on a chain, fills the gaping and grotesque mouth of another. Tucked away behind closed doors, a dandified figurine resembles a regency-based Airfix constriction kit re-imagined by Dali.
The three works on paper come equally disguised. Vintage photographs of civic monuments in city parks have their focal points partially erased, so all that’s left are disembodied stone feet standing proud against the trees. In another, hands cling to tree-top branches as if some beast with five fingers had found a nest-egg. By rubbing out what’s topographically real, there’s a sense of eerie nostalgia and hauntological hide and seek at play as the past is manipulated by ghosts in the machine in a beguilingly metaphysical set of works. (Neil Cooper)
112 THE LIST 28 Apr–26 May 2011
Stockbroker-turned-mass-media-manipulator Koons has always been a contentious figure in the apolitically voyeuristic world of pop art. A Brooks Brothers outfitted amalgam of Warhol and Duchamps, Koons is only ever as interesting as the times he lives in. A time of economic decline is not really the best time to appreciate his more decadent indulgences.
The lithograph ‘Made in Heaven’ of La Cicciolina
and Koons in a romantic clinch is at the centre of this exhibition. It’s a work that has, at least, stood the test of time. That cannot be said of the garish publicity photo of him standing before a blackboard bearing the message ‘Exploit the masses, Banality as saviour.’ The blood boils. In the annexing rooms the Easyfun series of animal
mirrors and the polychromed wood sculptures of bears have a kitsch appeal. The best works here represent Koons’ youth and maturity as a conceptualist. The 1980s installation ‘New Hoover Convertibles . . .’ has a bold simplicity and 2003’s ‘Caterpillar Chains’ brings a quite inspired kind of artistic physics to bear on a large inflatable toy. (Paul Dale)
REVIEW FILM, PAINTING & OBJECTS ULLA VON BRANDENBURG: NEUE ALTE WELT The Common Guild, Glasgow, until Sat 21 May ●●●●●
German artist Ulla von Brandenburg’s exhibition Neue Alte Welt (New Old World) consists of three parts: a short film, a wall painting of a theatre hall, and a collection of objects that act as theatrical props.
‘Chorspiel’ is part-opera, part-performance, part beautifully shot black-and-white film. A family of four – an elderly woman, an elderly man, a middle-aged woman and a young woman – are visited by a young man, the Wanderer. Trapped in a situation unknown to the viewer, as if under a spell in a folk legend, the characters act with purpose, but without sensibility. The Wanderer, a solitary figure on a quest for fulfilment, arrives with a closed box, perhaps a symbol of hope to break the spell and to set them free. What unfolds seems cyclical and we are not sure to what extent the young man is implicated in this entrapment.
Still mesmerised by the accomplished film, we wander upstairs to find a collection of objects. Some make links with the film, but others seem far removed and break the spell. (Talitha Kotzé)