amarie bergman

"Whenever you look at light, basically it's just air. It has no tactileness to it. It's totally without density."

Robert Irwin, untitled (dawn to dusk), 2016, permanent collection, the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, photo by Alex Marks © 2020 Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

"To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions."

Robert Irwin, Two Running Violet V Forms 1983, University of California San Diego, two fencelike structures in V-forms amidst eucalptus trees, blue-violet, plastic-coated, small gauge chain-link fencing supported by stainless steel poles, approx. 25' / 7.62m height, Stuart Collection

para 1: via Los Angeles Times 2010 A flowering of activity for Robert Irwin, 81

para 2: via Art Forum International 1977 Robert Irwin's recent work [The State of the Real. Part I, Jan Butterfield, Arts Magazine, Sunnier 1972, page 48]

current exhibition: Light & Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen, 3 December - 4 September 2022

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Amarie Bergman, installation view of Luxelles with 3 of 4 components; 12-26 March 2022, PS Art Space, Fremantle; image courtesy of the artist 

The brilliance of light mesmerises! In PS Art Space's upstairs gallery, the light is almost irresistible. Linked with the unique, historical architecture, it has an ambient evanescence that was recently, ever so temporarily, accentuated by the presence of Luxelles.

The three weeks when this site-specific and conceptually experimental exhibition existed - including 3 days to install the work - happened to be during the 3rd (+) decade of climate change neglect, the 3rd year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 3rd week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dark /uncertain /troubling times… but really they're not without the perpetual presence of clear ideals, active altruism, and innumerable glimmers of hope.

By conceiving enlightenment through fragile objects, Luxelles became a phenomenological agent of refinement.

12-26 March 2022

for photos (by Susie Blatchford of Pixel Poetry): glide over to this link
for exhibition statement + detailed floor list: click here 

Special appreciation to Paul MacGillivary, Mat Carey, and Guilhem Thérond

PS Art Space
https://www.psas.com.au/pages/archives/luxelles/ 

22-26 Pakenham Street
Fremantle AU 6160

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"There’s only a certain amount of control you can have over a situation. I’m interested in working in that area in which the mind can no longer hold on to things. The point at which all ideas fall apart."

Fred Sandback, Untitled (Sculptural Study, Seventeen-part Right-angled Construction), red acrylic yarn, 1985/2006 situational: spatial relationships established by the artist; overall dimensions vary with each installation, courtesy David Zwirner Gallery

"My knitting-yarn sculpture is a somewhat distant cousin to some other string games. Maybe the one that uses the most space is kite flying. But the one that is the oldest, and the most universal, is cat’s cradle. Indians, Eskimos, Bushmen, and many other cultures around the world have had games like cat’s cradle since before anyone can remember...Often cat’s cradle is about making a little place—just for yourself, or to share with someone...you can put it in your pocket when you’re busy with something else, and take it out again when you’re not. Although, as you can see, it’s not so hard to build big things like my sculpture. All it takes is a ball of string. If you were feeling a little adventurous, you could even wrap up your whole house."

Fred Sandback, Untitled (Red Floor Piece), 1/16-inch diameter red elastic cord and red acrylic on steel, 4.1 x 11.4 x 670.6cm: first iteration 1967 Summer Group Show. Yale School of Art and Architecture, New Haven, Connecticut (in Sandback's studio)

para 1: via Hyperallergic 2016 The Point at Which All Ideas Fall Apart: Fred Sandback: Grand Illusions 

para 2: via A Children’s Guide to Seeing by Fred Sandback, made to accompany his 1989 exhibition of yarn sculptures at the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum (also see On Needing A Place to Play and Letting Your Fingers Think)

current posthumous exhibition: Fred Sandback, Foundation CAB, Brussels, 7 September 2021 - 26 June 2022

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"Only with the pigment drawings, where the technique has given me a known way in through many years of practice, do I have a consistent entrance. For the rest of it — the photo work, writing, watercolor drawings, artist’s books, the sculpture installations and the occasional performance — the entrance comes by discovery each time: a thought or unexpected insight, a misunderstanding, a coincidence, a mistake, a moment that separates out from previous ones."

Roni Horn, Air Burial, cast glass 2017-2018, Pola Museum of Art, Hakone 2021-2022, photo by Masaya Hudaka

"...the “what it looks like” bit only comes in after the exploration, in a sense. It evolves out of the exploration. To have that option kept open until the very end or close to the end is very high risk for me. But then again, in my work, things do come to an end. They don't they don't just keep going on. So my point is, there's nothing until there's something — and that's a high risk proposition."

Roni Horn, Gold Field (left) 99.99% pure gold foil (annealed) 1980/1994; and Bouquet of Emily (right) solid aluminum and cast white plastic, 1 of 6 parts, 2006-07, Pola Museum of Art, Hakone 2022, photo by Koroda Takeru

para 1: via The New York Times 2021 Roni Horn Shares a Timely Record of Solitude 

para 2: via The Talks 2021 Roni Horn: There's Nothing Until There's Something 

current exhibition: When you see your reflection in water, do you recognize the water in you? Pola Museum, Hakone Japan, 18 September 2021 – 30 March 2022

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Lawrence Weiner, courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac https://ropac.net/artists/88-lawrence-weiner/

Maybe, beyond a retrospective exhibition, the most enduring ways for an artist to be remembered are with printed exhibition catalogues / reviews and online videos. The most endearing way is, without a doubt, a personal experience.

Lawrence Weiner passed away this week: he was - for me - an icon of experimental, witty and quixotically empathetic art. I was fortunate enough to see his work - along with pieces by Matthew Higgs and John Baldessari - @ The Apartment in Vancouver CA. Here's the link to my interview back in 2008 with the gallery's director:

https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/with-lee-plested-from-apartment/1280

The last words of this mini vale are epitomised by Lawrence Weiner himself.

Lawrence Weiner, As Long As It Lasts, 1992/2008, [photo, Lee Plested 2008] courtesy The Apartment

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"I prepare an impasto which contains pigments and chalk. I spread a thin layer of colour each day, almost at the same time [because of the consistency of light], for 15 days or more, depending on the thickness I want to get. In this time you can’t see the final colour, only at the end, when the pigments are dispersed on the surface through abrasion, you discover a totally different colour... the pigment dust’s final burst."

Ettore Spalletti, installation view, La beauté est là où l’œil se pose, Galerie LeLong, Paris 2013, photo courtesy of Galerie LeLong

"Yes, the colour, as it shifts, occupies the space and we enter. The frame that delimited the space is no longer there. Taking it away, the colour takes on the space and invades the space. And when this happens, it’s miraculous."

Ettore Spalletti, installation view (one gallery room) Un giorno cosi bianco, cosi bianco, Fondazione MAXXI, Rome 2014, photo courtesy of Fondazione MAXXI

para 1: via Apollo 2016 How do you capture a colour? Interview with Ettore Spalletti
para 2: via MAXXI Foundation 2014 press release Un Giorno Cosi Bianco, Cosi Bianco curated by Anna Mattirolo 

first posthumous exhibition of Ettore Spalletti: Il cielo in una stanza (The sky in a room), curated by Éric de Chassey, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, 25 October 2021 - 27 February 2022

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“Pattern finding is the purpose of the mind and the construct of the universe. There are an infinite number of patterns, some of which are known; those still unknown hold the key to unresolved enigmas and paradoxes.”

Aerial view: Agnes Denes, Wheatfield - A confrontation, Battery Park Landfill, Downtown Manhattan 1982 Courtesy the artist

"...For the first time in human history, the whole earth is becoming one interdependent society with our interests, needs and problems intertwined and interfering. The threads of existence have become so tightly interwoven that one pull in any direction can distort the whole fabric, affecting millions of threads. A new type of analytical attitude is called for, a clear overview or summing up, in which essences carry pure meaning and all things can be considered once more simultaneously..."

Installation view: Agnes Denes, Absolutes and Intermediates: The Shed, New York 2019, photo Dan Bradica, courtesy The Shed

para 1 + 2: via http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/writings.html

 
current land art: Expanding the Atlas, Nevada Museum of Art, Nevada 26 June 2021 - 02 January 2022

Agnes Denes: website

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Something different, just like a holiday! This logette is the first in a series on artists, who I admire in thought/word/deed (art), composed of 2 paragraphs - in their own words - and 2 of their works. Et voici: Anish Kapoor.
  

"An artist’s job is to go into the studio and say ‘I don’t know what to do, I’m lost.’ That it’s the impossibility, if you like, of any poetic substance. And then you go in there and in spite of that terrible feeling, which you have to live with, you do something and you think ah, maybe that can lead to its own content, not something already there...And I’m really interested in that as a process. Because it’s a process that leads you in directions you couldn’t imagine, directions you couldn’t rationally put there."

Installation view: Anish Kapoor Lisson Gallery 25 March - 9 May 2015 Courtesy the artist + Lisson Gallery
 

"I think I've had three or four moments in my work over the last twenty-five years that have been real discoveries. The pigment pieces felt to me as if they were a discovery about an object and what an object can be; how an object can be and not be. Then, of course, the void pieces. The idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don't empty out the content at all. The content is there in a way that's more surprising than if I tried to make a content. So, therefore, the idea that subject matter is somehow not the same as content. Then, in a different sort of way, moving from matte surfaces to shiny surfaces. In terms of the fact that the traditional sublime is the matte surface, deep and absorbing, and that the shiny might be a modern sublime, which is fully reflective, absolutely present, and returns the gaze. This feels like a new way to think about the non-objective object."

Installation view: Anish Kapoor Lisson Gallery 25 March - 9 May 2015 Courtesy the artist + Lisson Gallery 

para 1: via Phaidon 2015/ Anish Kapoor An artist's job is to say I'm lost
para 2: via Tate Magazine 2007/ In conversation with Heidi Reitmaier
 

next exhibition: Lisson Gallery, London 14 September - 30 October 2021

Anish Kapoor: website

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