VISUAL ART | Reviews
SCULPTURE / INSTALLATION BETH DYNOWSKI: NEW STATES Market Gallery, Glasgow, until Fri Dec 6 ●●●●●
The first solo show from Beth Dynowski comprises a curious set of objects, extending across Market Gallery’s three exhibition spaces. The ceramic, metal and found items that litter the floors hold their own aesthetic fascination – colourful, oversized, ceramic neurons that tinkle as you walk among them, and jewel- like watercolours that dot the walls – but the show is a three-part installation rather than a compendium of the conceptual artist’s practice.
The key to the exhibition is its title: New States. Using
tropes of visual trickery and chemical reaction, the installation underlines the fact that change can happen without very much seeming to change at all. The show’s accompanying text reveals that the apparently
abstract paintings are actually detailed studies of the remnants of an ancient Greek astronomical device. This caused a change in perception, much like the one that upset the belief that the sun revolved around the earth.
Elsewhere, mis-shapen ceramics are painted to look like
boulders; a pair of cheaply-made high-street boots masquerade as antiques; and in the centre gallery, two long metal pipes extend from the walls, their turquoise ‘corrosion’ caused by a mixture of ammonia and sawdust. It’s in this gallery that the ceramic neurons fill the floor. From a collection of seemingly disparate objects, Dynowski
has created a complex installation that prods and pokes at perception, creating tension and drawing lines between ancient civilisations and modern life, the authentic and the fake, the human-made and the natural. New States is constructed to get your own (non-ceramic) neurons firing. And it most definitely achieves that, making clear that when the ground shifts beneath us, we are the ones who move. (Jaclyn Arndt)
WOODBLOCK PRINTS KABUKI: JAPANESE THEATRE PRINTS National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Sun 2 Feb ●●●●●
PHOTOGRAPHY VIVIANE SASSEN: IN AND OUT OF FASHION Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 9 Feb ●●●●● MIXED MEDIA GROUP SHOW LIVING WITH WAR: ARTISTS ON WAR AND CONFLICT Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 9 Mar ●●●●●
The 19th century woodblock prints depicting kabuki – a traditional form of Japanese theatre performed exclusively by men – could easily be compared to modern celebrity magazines. The examples here are displayed like comic-strip panels, the coloured ink as bright as if the images had been made yesterday; even the museum’s dimly lit room fails to dull their luminosity.
Censors’ marks help to date the images (the strong colours respond to Japan's modernisation and the removal of censorship following the military regime’s collapse in 1868), and most of them depict the superstar actors in scenes of revenge or fantasy.
Viviane Sassen’s work is located at the intersection of fine art and fashion photography, and primarily focuses on the female form. The figures captured are treated like sculptural material, moulded by simple interruptions of light, shadow and mirrors. The effects are dramatic and surreal. Taking its turn among the conceptual exhibitions that often fill GoMA’s Gallery 1, Living with War: Artists on War and Conflict covers 200 years of responses to human-made atrocity, from Goya’s Disasters of War etchings (1810–20) to one of Jenny Holzer’s LED screens.
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery has taken Through a wide range of works taken from
Sassen’s working methods as a curatorial guide for her debut UK exhibition, In and Out of Fashion. At the entrance, her photographs are projected onto mirrors and sliced up further into strange, distorted films, continually interrupted by the reflections of passing viewers. Glasgow Museums’ collection, Living with War not only provides a perspective on artists’ attempts to make an impact by exploring issues such as sectarianism, famine and torture, but also showcases how effective such attempts at artistic political action can be.
The city of Eso, for example, is the focus for Another projection scrolls through Sassen’s
The works’ varying impact plays to the
the character of the fighter, whereas Osaka concentrates on the lover. An image showing the customary summer cooling-off by the harbour allows a change of pace and content and, unlike the rest of the pictures in the exhibition, depicts the actors offstage. Despite the limitations of the medium, this vivid exhibition of an affordable and colourful means of entertainment provides a fascinating insight into a culture rarely put on display. (Barry Gordon)
photographs, creating an endless production line of larger-than-life models. Some images are contained within glass vitrines, forming collages that appear to be thrown together with the same impulsiveness that constructs the images themselves. The show's atmosphere is experimental and
daring, and it hovers somewhere between a catwalk spectacle, a theatrical offering and a gallery exhibition. It's a fitting format for Sassen’s innovative and unpredictable output. (Rachael Cloughton)
exhibition’s advantage: obvious pieces such as kennardphillipps’ Know Your Enemy set off the graceful simplicity of others, such as Emily Jacir’s Crossing Surda (a record of going to and from work). This video of the Palestinian artist’s daily walk through an Israeli checkpoint has the mundane becoming harrowing while the harrowing becomes mundane. It's the contested ability of art to contribute to politics that’s on display here, as much as politics itself. (Jaclyn Arndt)
104 THE LIST 14 Nov–12 Dec 2013