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list.co.uk/visualart Previews & Reviews | VISUAL ART
PHOTOGRAPHY LEWIS BALTZ WITH WORKS BY CARL ANDRE AND CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE Stills, Edinburgh until Sat 9 Jul ●●●●●
The word ‘Ideal’ forms the title of a key image by the late American photographer Lewis Baltz in ‘The Prototype Works’ (1967–76). This is one of three series of images seen in parallel with text-based pieces by Carl Andre and a sculptural construction from Charlotte Posenenske. Framed in close- up monochrome, the elaborate music-hall turn of a font that beams out from ‘Ideal’ also points to the false optimism of a post-WW2 suburbia that was never quite delivered. As a prime mover in the New Topographics wave of
1970s landscape photography, Baltz captured the built-in obsolescence of the Californian desert once its untamed public space was co-opted and domesticated by developers across the decades. If ‘The Prototype Works’ show off worlds already inhabited but destined to be gentrified, fetishised and restyled as ‘vintage’, the 33 images of ‘Park City’ (1979) show half-built ideal homes sitting unoccupied beside mountains of rubble.
A decade later, ‘Candlestick Point’ (1989) tracks what at first glance looks like a seemingly unspoilt idyll, before a far-off flat-pack city emerges beyond the telegraph poles and dumping ground of old tyres. Viewed side by side like a cartoon strip or flick-book stills, such wide open spaces frozen between moments in motion resemble the panoramas of Wim Wenders or Michelangelo Antonioni.
Andre’s ‘One Hundred Sonnets, BIRD’ and ‘One Hundred Sonnets, TREE’ (both 1963) are concentrated concrete impressions of their subject, while Posenenske’s ‘Vierkantrohre Serie D’ (1967–2014) is a wilfully functionless steel air shaft-like arrangement that comes from and goes nowhere. The silver tiles of Andre’s ‘Aluminium Sum Ten’ (2003), which grow grubby from being walked on, are designed to be taken apart and reassembled. Similarly, in the bare patches of scrubland of Baltz’s images, the wear and tear traces of humanity make their mark. (Neil Cooper)
The UK’s largest annual festival of visual art 28th July— 28th August edinburghartfestival.com #EdArtFest
Festival commissions Bani Abidi Roderick Buchanan Graham Fagen Sally Hackett Jonathan Owen Ciara Phillips Olivia Webb
Solo presentations Jennifer Bailey at Collective, Donovan & Siegel at Edinburgh Printmakers, Kenny Hunter at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Damián Ortega at The Fruitmarket Gallery, Jonathan Owen at Ingleby, Christian Boltanski at Jupiter Artland, Barbara Rae at Open Eye Gallery, Jo Spence at Stills, Alice Neel at Talbot Rice Gallery
Important historical exhibitions and modern surveys William Gillies and John Maxwell at City Art Centre, The Scottish Endarkenment at Dovecot Gallery, 30 years of Inverleith House, Celts at National Museum of Scotland, New Media Scotland with Travelling Gallery, The Art of the Garden at The Queen’s Gallery, Inspiring Impressionism at Scottish National Gallery, Joseph Beuys at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Facing the World at Scottish National Portrait Gallery
New generation artists The Number Shop, Rhubaba, Edinburgh College of Art, Platform: 2016 - a festival initiative showcasing early career artists
Co-commissioner Dazzle Ship Scotland
2 Jun–1 Sep 2016 THE LIST 99