Category: Art

Massive in scale, Donovan’s sculptural compositions explore themes of accumulation and aggregation. By making use of mass-produced goods that are ubiquitous in society but often overlooked, Donovan’s works force the viewer to reconsider their actions and habits in a world fuelled by consumption. Her commitment to an effortful, laboured, and site-responsive methodology connects her to movements such as Postminimalism and Process Art, with comparisons to artists such as Richard Serra. The visual impact of her sprawling works is a pleasurably profound experience; the atmospheric effects of her art has been compared to experiencing the immersive works of James Turrell. Many of Donovan’s installations use singular materials by the thousands, and the assemblage of these individual components yield to the overall impression of the works. ‘Untitled (Styrofoam cups)’ (2003/2008) depicts a cloud-like form made from white styrofoam cups, bringing the cosmos to one’s imagination. ‘Colony’ (2005) uses a labyrinth of pencils chopped at different heights, bunched together to suggest a contour map of an entire city or island, or the depiction of a molecular structure. Through this process, Donovan considers the beauty in everyday objects, twisting the familiar into something else—thereby translating our inattentive actions into aesthetic works of art.

The American artist’s practice can be described as an ongoing investigation of spaces, objects, and everyday acts of living towards a better understanding of our existence and participation in culture. If a constant reflection on human nature is found throughout the artist’s 30-year oeuvre, her interest in spatial containment is best encapsulated in the geographical experiential territory of ‘A-Z West’, Zittel’s art and research center in the Joshua Tree National Park, which functions as an evolving testing ground for experimental designs for living. ‘Planar Pavilions’ is the only artwork and section of the artist’s property to be open to the public at all times. Loosely arranged across a large piece of land between Zittel’s residence and the nearest highway, this otherworldly installation stands still and silent, inviting visitors to linger and contemplate concepts such as life, autonomy, and freedom.

Each pavilion consists of a series of vertical planes that function as walls, boundaries, and divisions; providing physical and psychological forms of shelter. Despite their abstract appearance and lacking roofs, the architectonic forms offer functional possibilities. They are suggestions of interior spaces meant to be shared; highly-articulated containers that both nurture and constrain, activating a dialogue of liberation through limitation and control. Completed in 2017, the installation functions as both architecture and an extension of the landscape itself. The large-scale sculptures appear unfinished, as if in a state of construction or abandonment, purposely evoking ancient ruins and creating a liminal zone that is neither entirely domesticated nor fully wild. Due to the ever-changing weather and light of the Mojave Desert, each configuration seems to also change throughout the day; shifting from appearing imposing with prominent black angles, to unobtrusive and quiet—subtly disappearing into the dust.

“When I started out, I made drawings, 3D sculptures, and performative sculptures,” Wurm says of his varied oeuvre. “I didn’t want to restrict myself to one medium, so, depending on the mood, I focused on one aspect of my work more than the others. Sometimes the public was more interested in the ‘One Minute Sculptures’, other times more in the ‘Fat’ series, but it made no difference to my work. I was doing the same thing, continuing to move forward.” What determined the success of certain pieces at certain points in his career? And what drove these trends and his response to them? “Perhaps it’s strange to have worked in different mediums and on different ideas simultaneously, but I adapted to the flux, and somehow it worked out ok for me,” he says.

Wurm strives to deal with the major questions of our lives with levity. He seduces his audience with absurdity and irony, inviting them to join him on a journey. “When I was studying, I realized that the big questions of our lives were treated with ‘pathos’; everything became big and important,” he explains. “Standing in front of these big, heavy works, I felt small, as if I was shrinking,” he says.

Laurent P. Berger and Cyrille Berger, respectively a visual artist and an architect, are known for their fusing of multiple art forms within their interactive works. With a consistent emphasis on balancing light and visuals, the pair’s works invite viewers to engage the senses while interacting with the spaces they create. In ‘No Tears for the Creatures of the Night’, an ostensibly straightforward maze of gray walls made from concrete slabs is peppered with three monumental sculptures, illuminated by white fluorescent lights that are cut across the ceiling diagonally. “The whole work is lit in various ways, creating a gradient from 600 lux to 50 lux,” explains a statement from the duo. “The spectrum between these two values constitutes the many conditions for lighting works in a museum: from sculpture todrawing on paper, simulating daylight, from light to darkness.” 

The voice of French actor and director Frédéric Fisbach leads viewers around the industrial room as they meander through the artwork; his narration can be heard drifting from speaker to speaker. His voice recites a text published in 1962 by Alain Robbe-Grillet, called The Secret Room, an intriguing short story in which Robbe-Grillet imagines a French Symbolist painting by Gustave Moreau that never actually existed. Berger&Berger have envisaged for ‘No Tears for the Creatures of the Night’ to be an imagined rendition, or “new version” of The Secret Room. The physical aspects of the work are a variation of architect Aldo Van Eyck’s plans for the Sonsbeek Pavilion, a temporary pavilion built in 1966 in Arnhem, The Netherlands. One of the three works placed within the installation is ‘Stèle 200’, a bronze sculpture by the French abstract sculptor Marta Pan (1923-2008). Other works include sculptures from Etienne Martin and André Bloc. Pan, heavily influenced by the architecture of Le Corbusier, who was a close friend, became famous for her floating sculptures; her contemplative works give form to the relationship between her art and its surroundings. Not dissimilarly, ‘No Tears for the Creatures of the Night’ can be said to follow this paradigm, creating a tangible connection between art and environment: where light and space, literature and sound, and audience and architecture become one.

Creating these architectural works allows Hendricks to merge multiple art mediums into single pieces; photography, graphic design, and painting. “I’m just making the visual worlds I want to see and be a part of,” she explains. “I want to see unique and creative buildings—man-made structures that borrow from the surrounding landscape’s color palettes and shapes. I want to marvel at that relationship.” The results depict otherworldly scenes mounted in geometric frames, that touch on Hendricks’ desire to see a more considered approach to design. “If we’re going to continue to expand and build, I want it to at least be smarter, more resourceful, and a lot more beautiful,” she says. “I guess I want to be an architect. I guess I sort of am.”

In this recent series of portraits with the same title, the subject’s facial features are not defined: “Instead, the aim is to capture a human spark with minimal intervention,” Khoshroo explains to IGNANT. “These faces are the result of simply taking a chunk of paint and molding it,” he says. Painted with a single pigment, Khoshroo applies generously thick layers of paint, forming outlines of faces with just a handful of swift movements—each step of the artist’s process can be followed through viewing the works. The result is a series of lively textured paintings that, although displaying no physical features, are imbued with human emotions. Through this method, Khoshroo creates “people that make you feel something, people you didn’t even know you were looking for.” Like many of his other paintings, the works in ‘White on White’ constitute abstract images composed of thickly applied paint with bold strokes, achieving a visual that is reminiscent of paintings from the Impressionist art movement.

Be it utilizing innovative technologies to create digital art, or creating a fortress of concrete buildings and abstract sculptures in the middle of a desert, the art we have listed here represents just a fracture of what we’ve witnessed in 2019. One artist took aluminum and fiber taken from a psychiatric facility to create five minimalist artworks, others created an installation of ocean waves that play on the viewer’s perception by glistening from different angles. Although their forms vary greatly, together, the artists listed below sparked meaningful discussions around personal identity, climate change, and social politics, while inspiring reverence as well.

Visitors are invited to explore an expansive chronological landscape charting pivotal moments throughout history, which have resulted in shifts in human perspective. Inspired by the Ancient Greek classical mnemonic technique of cataloguing memories within familiar locations, ‘Memory Palace’ is a detailed map carved meticulously from bamboo, materializing memories of key events in history. Filling the entire exhibition space and spanning a total of 18 meters, large-scale mirrors are used to reflect the installation upon itself, creating an immersive environment which offers a unique perspective of time and space. In this 3D map of history, time is traced back seventy-five millennia to the caves in Southern Africa that contain the first known human drawings; moving forward to 1543 and the tower in Frombork, Poland, where Nicholas Copernicus drew the first heliocentric map of the universe; then, to 2018 and the steps of the Swedish parliament where Greta Thunberg began her School Strike for Climate.

In total there are seventy-three momentous events mapped here. This cataloguing of events is a personal and subjective one, chosen as the result of a collaborative process between Devlin and her studio members. In the piece, continued collaboration is encouraged and visitors are invited to immerse themselves within the landscape and reflect upon the ever-changing nature of human history and our place within it. Located in the former house of one of Britain’s most influential architects, Sir John Soan, the artist has also transformed the library of this remarkable building, filling the space with books which have contributed to informing the installation.

Krasner was a leading role-model for female artists of the time period, paving the way for future generations. She articulated her determination and spirit in her art, translating the interplay between her many roles—as artist, woman, and wife—into a unique creativity, inviting viewers to absorb a plethora of sensibilities. Krasner despised rigidity and never developed a ‘signature style’, working instead in cycles, constantly experimenting and seeking new means for authentic expression, towards a pictorial language that was all her own. She believed in reinvention; she destroyed and revised old works and created new ones. Her art is defined by an audacious force; in her carefully considered compositions, precision marries visual dissonance through contrasting color arrangements, sharply defined contours, and dynamic shapes; all splendidly arranged and rearranged.

Lee Krasner’s retrospective is on display at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany, until January 12, 2020.

“Once you give something a name, along with it comes all the art historical baggage, but a lot of possibilities and new levels of meaning, too”Along with other iconic elements, such as his famous x’s and u’s, flashes of fire and flames have spread across Guyton’s work since the mid-1990s, when he arrived in New York City from Tennessee, with no clear idea of what made the city’s contemporary art market tick. The first time he presented his printed works as “paintings” was in 2006, at his aptly titled exhibition ‘Paintings’ in London. “Once you give something a name, along with it comes all the art historical baggage, but a lot of possibilities and new levels of meaning, too,” he says. Art needs language to be contextualized and, of course, Guyton’s terminology entered art critical discourse as a provocation. Stunned by the seeming simplicity of his process and, perhaps, inspired (or offended) by the artist’s penchant for playing with words, some people dismissed him as a “high-end art director”. Clearly, some people weren’t paying attention.