IFEOMA ANYAEJI – TRANSMOGRIFICATION

Posted on 2013-09-30

Ifeoma Anyaeji’s recent sculpture employs a virtuosic ability to create elegant forms drawn from architecture and domestic furniture design through the reconstruction of found objects such as the ubiquitous plastic bags and bottles.

She utilizes a process that is physically and conceptually steeped in memory, history and the passage of time to create work that radically put into question conventional notions of what sculpture is. Using hair plaiting technique known as Threading from her homeland, she threads and braids discarded plastic bags into plasto-yarns which she combines with strong compositional organization to create complex yet lyrical assemblages of everyday objects that reflect subtle understanding of context and awareness of the relationship between function and experimentation.There is an abiding urge in her work to highlight the relevance of social responsibility to the environment in today’s hyper-consumer society as she engages with the cyclical nature of production, accumulation and regeneration in the creative process, and as stated by the artist “My concept of material reuse through the transformation of an object’s physical state, is to echo the environmental implication of accumulation and the extensiveness of a politicized archeology of modernity’s consumptive system”.

Exhibition runs through to November 2nd, 2013

Skoto Gallery
529 West 20th Street, 5FL
New York
NY
10011

www.skotogallery.com

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LUTZ BACHER – BLACK BEAUTY

Posted on 2013-09-30

Black Beauty is the first major solo exhibition in the UK by American artist Lutz Bacher. Occupying an important position in contemporary art practice, Lutz Bacher’s work is receiving increasing levels of international recognition. Black Beauty provides a unique opportunity to see Bacher’s new works made specifically for the ICA together with recent work for the first time in London.

Since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, Bacher has drawn upon disconnected information from popular culture and her own life, producing works that play with the interchangeability of identity, sexuality and the human body. Bacher uses images and objects in a physical, sometimes visceral manner, conducting arrangements of seemingly disparate entities and allowing them to interact in new ways. The artist’s expansive work explores human identity as it is defined through gender, sexuality and the human body. Lutz Bacher is as elusive as her work is ambiguous, perhaps preferring not to dictate how her works should be viewed.

The exhibition at the ICA presents new and recent works which combine striking installations with film, sound and sculpture. At the core of the exhibition is Black Beauty (2012), several tons of coal slag which will flow throughout the lower gallery. This piece is paired with a sound work, Puck (2012) which envelopes the viewer as they move through the space. The audio recording of the character Puck at the conclusion of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is repeated with different emphases and pronunciations. Black Magic (2013) is a new site specific work made from black vibrating ‘astroturf’ that will be displayed along the full length of the concourse in the lower gallery.

Exhibition runs through to November 17th, 2013

Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London
SW1Y 5AH

www.ica.org.uk

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FEODOR VORONOV – RELICS

Posted on 2013-09-30

Voronov’s newest works feature his emblematically bold color palette and obsessive mark making techniques, but stem from new source material. His vibrant abstractions of words and letters become monuments to his visual thought process and interest in the interconnectivity of language, thus acting as literal and figurative Relics of his practice.

In establishing his painterly exploration of the socially explicit and implied perceptions of a word, Voronov has visually conceptualized the idiosyncrasies, structure, and comprehension of human communication. Each canvas features an object-like knot of fine ballpoint pen lines, gestural swaths of spray paint, and whimsical bands of marker ink floating within a raw canvas womb, as if illustrating the intricate nature of language’s evolution. Voronov’s seemingly organic marks co-exist alongside regimented patterns, thus emphasizing the respectively colloquial and formal aspects to our daily parlance.

Though he has been working from a single list of vocabulary words for nearly three years, Voronov has now turned his attention to their amassed combination and composition, likening syntax to the analytical configuration of imagery. Inspired by John Chamberlain’s 2012 retrospective at the Guggenheim, Voronov drew from the amalgamations of his metal sculptures, impressed by their feigned weightlessness despite their “hulking masses and multitudes of fractured and jumbled planes.” Much like Voronov’s own work, these assemblages gave material formality to the tensions, balance, and anatomy of composition, be it physical or intellectual. Stemming from this idea, Voronov’s Relics reference terms and phrases from a long, rambling paragraph he calls his “piggy bank” – an autobiographical stream of consciousness – that allows for the advanced entanglements competing focal points. More than ever, the viewer will find evolving entry points and altered senses of perspective in Voronov’s paintings, analogous to the individualized way in which we converse.

Exhibition runs through to October 12th, 2013

Mark Moore Gallery
5790 Washington Boulevard
Culver City
Los Angeles
CA
90232

www.markmooregallery.com

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