RIVANE NEUENSCHWANDER, South London Gallery

Top: Rivane Neuenschwander, still from

Inventory of Small Deaths (Blow), 2000

Super 8 film transferred to DVD 

Below: Rivane Neuenschwander, Suspension Point, 2008

Installation view, South London Gallery, Photo: Andy Keate

London - I want to retrace an initial impression of a show I saw a few weeks ago: Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander’s exhibition Suspension Point at South London Gallery. I have a poor memory, even if it’s just reaching by a day or so, so I make no promises of accuracy. But I think a vague outline is in keeping with the fluid tensions set up in the exhibition, the sense that material objects and physical places exist in perpetual transition with streams of thoughts and sensations.

For the exhibition the artist transformed the Victorian gallery by constructing a second floor. On entering the space visitors are confronted with a choice: to climb a newly-constructed wooden staircase—to go up into the bright expanse of a high-ceiling second level and walk onto its unfinished plywood floor—or to head toward the construction itself, into the web of beams and frames that support the structure.

The white walls of the upper level are lined with drill holes the size of golf balls, decorative peepholes that stop short of pushing through to the outside. The shavings from the drilling are spread into a haphazard pile of sawdust, a miniature mountain of growth that rises from the ground. (On second thought, perhaps the sawdust is a byproduct of the larger construction, remnants of the trees that makes up the flooring?) In another spot a dented metal bowl has been inserted into an opening in the floor. Droplets of water fall on its surface and, amplified by a microphone, echo like hits to a kettledrum. (Seen from below, I realize that there’s no dripping water after all, that I’ve been duped by a recording.) Walking back down the staircase and underneath the floor, I felt like I was descending underground. But in contrast to the subterranean feel, Neuenschwander inserted a Super 8 film of a giant bubble as it drifts its way through landscapes and sky.

If it sounds overly complicated, it’s my fault. In the end, the artist has occupied the space with a poignant simplicity. Her sculptural hand draws lines of continuity between natural and constructed materials, through the social parameters and possibilities of the space, and back around to the romantic and practical frameworks that imbue them with meaning and purpose. She abbreviates a body of water to a bowl, then inserts a phantom leak like some meditative soundtrack or a quiet clock to the head. She transforms a ground level gallery into an introverted, basement-like environment, only to propose an idyllic view through a cinematic window, an outside world seen through the soft distortion of a floating bubble.

Walking through the exhibition I was left with a sense of having moved through territory, of having passed through the objects and associations as they fold one into the other, expanding and collapsing like breaths through breathing things.

I realize I would benefit from a return visit to take in more of the details that I’m sure are there…to collect background information on the artist, her intent, exhibition history, working context and so on. But the truth is, I’m satisfied with the richness of my first viewing and content to chew on my hazy associative recollection.

Liz Bruchet

GUIDO IGNATTI, Esquina de Gorriti y Carranza

Buenos Aires - One night, not long ago, I received a text message from my friend Guido: “Veni.” It was an invitation to come to a nearby street corner where he was staging an intervencion titled Sin Titulo (publicidad interior). Guido had chosen a corner in Palermo Hollywood in front of an old, one-story, Italianate house slated for demotion. This was once the rough and tumble neighbourhood across Maldonado Creek, featured in Borges tales, where victims of knife-fights often had their bodies dumped. Now the area exemplifies the gentrifying creep of Palermo restaurants, bars, and fashion.

I arrived to find Guido, with the help of his boyfriend, working quickly and deliberately in front of the old house - currently surrounded by pre-construction billboards advertising a Peruvian shaman’s new self-help book. Here Guido had chosen to re-paper these billboards with wallpaper. The rolls of flowered Victorian paper were unrolled on the sidewalk, slathered with paste, and mounted over the shaman’s multiple faces.

I stood back to watch, take pictures, and offer the odd hand passing a tray or brush. Guido’s act of domesticating a public and commercial space contrasted sharply with the well-dressed passersby on their ways to the local chic restaurants and bars. Understandably, any out-of-place public act can lead to unexpected responses, which often take narrative form. And this night’s narrative involved an old woman, a police officer, potential reprimand, unexpected praise, and a warning that Guido’s work could be vandalised. But as tempting as it is to recount that story (complete with its beautiful ironies), I think it is consequent and subordinate to Guido’s act and the tone it set.

Perhaps “exterior” is the best adjective that describes Guido’s furtive actions: the element of vandalism, and thus risk, was palpable. But the sense of risk was not due solely to this act of “vandalism.” The act felt denuding. We naturally expect tension when the outside world invades private space. We are more familiar with the fear of the uncontrollable and threatening invading our interior refuges. But Guido’s piece demonstrated the opposite elicits just as much tension: bringing the intimate and private into the street infused that corner with a palpable sense of vulnerability. Brought outside, the wallpaper seemed to re-expose the old house, to bring it back in front of the billboards, to turn the old house inside-out. With this simple change, Guido converted the mise-en-scene of the street.

The next day I received an email. Guido had returned and photographed the corner in the bright morning sun. At some point in the night, along one side of one billboard, someone had torn a small piece of the wallpaper. It was now, in his words, “perfecto.”

Nathan Tichenor

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET, Victoria Miro

London - Though much narrower in its scope than The Islanders, Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibition Too Late, at Victoria Miro, managed to transport me as well, making me nostalgic for a scene I’ve never been a part of. In what sounded at first like a self-indulgent proposition, the pair recreated a gay nightclub in the gallery. But I was taken by how well they managed to harness an atmosphere of sexual tension, social revelry and an almost familiar sense of community while imbuing it with the residual aura that comes when the party’s over, when “lights are still blinking and the disco ball sadly spinning, but there’s no-one on the dance floor, and the last round has been served long ago.”

The “missing common social ground” they refer to extends beyond the specifics of any particular scene and instead draws on a collective vulnerability and a shared sense of loss. Makes me wonder where we’ve all gone off to…

Liz Bruchet

CHARLES AVERY, Parasol Unit

London - Last night I visited Charles Avery's exhibition, The Islanders: An Introduction, at Parasol Unit, an absolutely stunning exhibition fuelled by a rigorous imagination and artistic talent that spans literature, philosophy and visual art.

From the press release:

The Islanders: An Introduction is the latest instalment in Scottish artist Charles Avery's epic project which began in 2004. Avery has created texts, drawings, installations and sculptures which describe the topology and cosmology of an imaginary island, whose every feature embodies a philosophical proposition, problem or solution. Imbued with a formal beauty, humour, and a spirit of philosophical enquiry, these vivid and intricate works invite the viewer to recreate the Island in their own minds, and to use it as an arena for exploring philosophical conundrums and paradoxes.

It’s one thing to conceive of such an elaborate project, another entirely to pull it off with grace and conviction.

Liz Bruchet

SUSAN HILLER, Matt's Gallery

Susan Hiller The Last Silent Movie 2007 (video still)

Courtesy the artist and Matt's Gallery, London

London - On the topic of materials and their ability to conflate time, Susan Hiller’s work, The Last Silent Movie (2007), is another instance of an artist’s subtle slight of hand. Recently screened at Matt’s Gallery, the work takes simple source materials to poetic ends.

Visitors are ushered into a projection room and invited by the gallery assistant to take a seat. Cued by the work’s title and the darkened little theatre, I got the feeling I was being set up to expect a cinematic experience only to have it thwarted. True enough, the work doesn’t offer any visuals or narrative per se. Instead text appears on screen, introducing the name of a language with the words “extinct” or “seriously endangered” beneath. A short audio clip of the dialect in question follows and subtitles stream across the screen to provide translation. Another name appears, again followed by an audio sample and subtitles. Following this pattern, Hiller weaves together snippets of folk tales, segments of interviews and a few repetitive language exercises for good measure—efforts by anthropologists and linguists to capture these ‘dying’ languages in perpetuity.

Without visuals to rely on, senses get mixed up. The crackling of obsolete recording equipment takes on more weight, and I felt as if I were watching for sounds. The passing of time felt almost physical. The rough voices of the elders and the tentative repetitions of the novice language students seem to scratch their way along history. They talk of losing the right to speak their native tongue, of how their voices have been hushed, misinterpreted, or done away with, yet the smooth fluency of their tongues elevates their speech and makes me anticipate the nostalgia they seemed to promise. (In one instance no translation of the language exists, so it becomes simply a beautiful, haunting melody.)

Even as outsiders, the audience is implicated. We are forced to read the text on screen to comprehend the sound, words that can never adequately translate the nuances and inflections of spoken language. Just as the text offers a point of entry, it becomes an imposter, a colonizing force. Just as the screen displays a way in, it provides evidence of what has been taken away.

The sparse nature of the work brings the complexity of language back into focus, assigning equal weight to its practicality, its sensual power and its political might. Our desire to experience what is being said directly—unmediated by text—transforms what might otherwise be a conceptual or academic exercise into a shared, physically felt experience of loss. In less capable hands, this work may have been conceived of as a sound work, kept as a sentimental, politically correct statement. Thankfully Hiller knows how to let material speak for itself.

Liz Bruchet

GUIDO IGNATTI, War Club

Buenos Aires – War Club in Boedo is more club than gallery where you can listen and dance to live dj sets. However, instead of go-go dancers or shows, you are surrounded by art. I like the idea of “curating” a club, and War Club has a good curator. Daniela Luna injects War Club’s events with the same punk energy she brings to her Appetite Gallery in San Telmo where the art is not only on the walls but also in the events that occur between them.

War Club proves that the true spirit of punk is not in the heavy-touch, but rather in the no-touch. The space itself, a former factory, has neither been altered nor honed and instead maintains its concrete floors, cracked plaster walls, and courtyard bar’s half-open-to-the-sky ceiling. On the club’s opening night, the bar itself consisted of no more than a chest-fridge with its available (albeit limited) drinks written on a piece of paper in quick sharpie pen. But the crowd who patronizes War Club is not picky; moreover, they come not for the space but for what happens in the space – for the art, the music, and the people.

So it was in keeping with this spirit of counter-intervention that Luna invited one of her artists to create an installation at War Club. In a small former kitchen, sandwiched in a corner between the bar and the main room, Guido Ignatti has "non-transformed" the space. Because it looks deceptively similar to how it appeared before Ignatti began. With Poetica intimista en un espacio que no le corresponde (or Intimate poetry in a space that does not correspond), Ignattti gives us a seemingly institutional kitchen, very much of a bygone era of sometime between 1950 and 1980.

Ignatti’s hand is barely noticeable: you can’t be certain which features are original and which have been changed. In fact, much of the original kitchen remains – including the tiles, countertops, and appliances. But Ignatti cleaned and honed these features until they became more than themselves. The tiles transcend their uniqueness; they are also the essence of Tiles.

Ignatti added the carpet which, when stepped on, automatically signals your entrance into a different space. You are in the kitchen but at the same time you float; your soft and quiet tread detaches you. But the wallpaper is probably the most surprising addition. Ignatti has aged it so convincingly you would swear it has been there for years prior. However, the baroque monkey-in-a-tree pattern provides the subtlest incongruity, suggesting another sensibility, another – perhaps parallel – place or time.

You feel like you’ve been here before but you are also aware of it being a unique space. Different epochs, specifics and ideals, along with your own individual memories, are conflated into one. For a moment time stands still.

Nathan Tichenor

ELBA BAIRON, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires – Braga Menendez Contemporaneo’s show of Elba Bairon’s sculptures features a large grid of basic black metal shelving displaying about a dozen pieces – mostly white, a few black – arranged as though they were drying in her studio. The shelving is surrounded by three, near-identical, near-life-sized, female figures sitting and holding something in their laps.

To me they appear to be “drying” because Bairon’s pieces look cast-molded from a ceramic or porcelain slip. And on the shelving her works seem like ceramics waiting to be fired, or in-between firings in what’s referred to as a “bisquit” stage (after the first firing but before the application of glaze and the final firing). Bairon’s medium is in fact not ceramic but rather a combination of papier mache and plaster. But their final smooth, matte, molded appearance heightens the sense that her works inhabit a state of constant “becoming”, or similarly, a position in-between states.

The shapes of the pieces themselves sit on the cusp of recognition. From one side, a piece appears amorphous, but from the other, with the addition of a few strokes of crayon-like paint, the piece becomes a human head. Likewise, a head with tree branches sprouting out the back, from another angle, looks like a human heart, arteries and all. The features of the seated female figures are so undefined that they seem equally either in the process of emerging or being eroded away. And the ceramic-ness of the pieces give them an appearance of over-sized figurines causing us to wonder: are these crafts, mass-produced chatchkas, or works of art?

And it is exactly this defiance of definition that breathes a subtle, beautiful life into Bairon’s pieces. Their forms engage our cognition. They invite us to perceive. And as a result, Bairon’s work stimulates an awareness of our perception: of how we form, shape, categorize, and make sense of our world. How, in fact, we make the world as we perceive it.

Nathan Tichenor

FERNANDO PALOMAR, ArteBA

Buenos Aires – Some of the best works to be seen at ArteBA were those in the curated sections. There was a number of installations and sculptures at El Rural’s rear section, each one emerging from the hall’s dark gloom. Sigismond de Vajay’s “Goodbye Gasoline” consisted of 42 miniature oil derricks on an elevated platform-cum-oil field. Lit with an eerie, post-apocalyptic twilight, each derrick moved slowly and methodically while occasional mists of smoke were released to complete the mood. Viewing stools stood at each corner, allowing you an eye-level perspective with the ground of the oil field. This was a hit at ArteBA, particularly with kids.

Also stunning was the huge video sculpture staircase designed by Guillermo Lerner. Commissioned by Converse shoes (to celebrate their 100th anniversary), the sculpture welcomed visitors into Converse's sponsored area: Caja Negra / Cubo Blanco - the curated video section of ArteBA.

But for me, the real show-stopper, take-away piece was Fernando Palomar’s “Haffner Finale.” In Palomar's video we see the artist seated at his drum set, in front of a picture window, outside of which the sun sets over a beautiful, pastoral landscape. Playing in the background we can hear the finale, or presto, of Mozart’s Symphony number 35 (Haffner). As the music zips along we watch Palomar mark the tempo, meticulously and silently, then jump in on his drums and join the timpani - along with the full orchestra. He jumps in and out of the music accordingly, producing dual sensations of, on the one hand, electric anticipation as he waits, and on the other, ecstatic communion when he joins in. The end result is hypnotic.

Palomar achieves a fantastic visual and aural layering of time. As the music crescendos with the sunset's culmination, we watch the artist literally mark time and play out the day. Initially the video gives a wonderfully simple impression of an amateur musician joining an orchestra as it plays a classical masterpiece. But by the video’s end you are so wrapped up in the fantastic swirl of music and vista, you begin to get the sneaking sensation that Palomar is the one in control of the entire situation, including the orchestration of the sun’s setting. Within 4 minutes Palomar moves from artist-as-novice to artist-as-master.

Fernando Palomar is a Mexican artist from Guadalajara.

Nathan Tichenor

The Best Spaces in Town

London - It’s been almost one year since my arrival in London, and I’m only now catching my breath.

I could report on an incalculable array of exhibitions and artists, but have decided to keep it to the point. My four favorite exhibition spaces to date are, in no particular order: Matt’s Gallery, INIVA, South London Gallery and Camden Arts Centre.

mattsgallery.org

iniva.org

southlondongallery.org

camdenartscentre.org

There are newer and/or grittier galleries that offer more avant-garde cred, but the integrity of these latter spaces has engaged me far beyond the bits and pieces that freckle the London scene. Each one offers a library or reading space, and the programming is discerning and inviting in equal measure…. and I look forward to their next offerings.

Liz Bruchet

ArteBA: Buenos Aires Contemporary Art Fair

Buenos Aires - Every year Buenos Aires holds its contemporary art fair in La Rural, the new and sprawling conference centre/complex. ArteBA lasts for 5 days (May 29 – June 2), and I went to the opening night party but also returned a couple times to take in the huge amount of work being shown. Opening nights are always difficult to focus on the art when the crowd takes your attention. Add to that many bottles of Chandon and a nasty film of cigarette smoke in the air and you get an environment not conducive to (and perhaps pointless to attempt) concentration.

Nevertheless I did leave that first night feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of the work and under-whelmed by the variety or the impact. However, taking into account that the numbing quantity of works on display might be a drawback of all art fairs (and the nature of the beast), I was certain to return to give the galleries and the work a second chance.

I returned Sunday to crowds that seemed even larger; a testament to the success of the fair. But again, I did feel, while on the whole good, not much of the work really stood out and grabbed me. In an art fair environment, the dealers really have to step it up and provide at least some dramatic impact. For better or for worse, when you’re displaying cheek to jowl, it inevitably becomes about image and impact. That said, Appetite Gallery’s stand was always busy with its chaotic rec room atmosphere – almost an extension of the San Telmo gallery’s physical ocation. And Del Infinito’s display of Alejandra Tavolini’s toy stuffed pig (cut in half, a la Damien Hirst) was a small but hilarious piece with affect, and it deserved its attention.


But when one of the most conservative galleries at the fair makes the biggest impact, I think something’s gone a bit wrong. Daniel Maman Fine Arts occupied one of the largest stands, but it was their use of that space, their museum quality installation of museum quality art, that was flawless. In particular Juan Batlle Planas’ untitled 1963 painting – a serious piece of real estate measuring 16’ X 12’ – loomed stunningly in the low light.


And painting there was. A lot of painting. In common with a lot of it today, much of the painting favoured subtleties, the small gesture. And that works really well when you stumble off a busy street into a quiet gallery. But an art fair environment just isn’t conducive to showing that kind of work. There were exceptions: testament to their beauty, Remo Bianchedi’s tiny paintings on wood grabbed me from the aisle and drew me into Galeria Jacques Martinez’s stand. I’ll return to their gallery on Avenida de Mayo to look at his work more.


There was some photography, but not as much as I’d hoped for. Not much explored new territory and not much had a really strong impact. But there were some videos and installations that grabbed me more, interestingly all part of the curated sections. I’ll detail those in the next post.

Nathan Tichenor

STREET ART, Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires - Today was unusually cold for Buenos Aires (around 8°C) and, as I was walking to the gym, a small flock of beautiful green parakeets flew overhead and landed in what looked like a cocoa tree. As they noisily picked at the fruit that was left on the tree, a group of people gathered to watch and discuss. There’s always something interesting to look at outside here, and it gives strangers a good excuse to have a conversation.

In Buenos Aires public life is engaging and that translates to the art. There seem to be some exceptional street artists working here judging from the examples you can find when wandering around. This isn’t your average graffiti: the quality of some of the work is extremely high. It ranges from stencil to free-hand, and cartoon to lyrical. 

I guess you could link this to the Latin American muralist tradition, and it would be a pretty valid connection. But I think the street art here speaks more to the urge to transform public spaces into works of art, to make something spectacular out of a piece of crumbling wall, and to make someone stop and take notice of a space that used to be only “in between.”

So with this strong presence of street art here, it was no surprise that, as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, Puma chose to sponsor the Urban Festival of Street Art in Buenos Aires this past May 24 and 25. 

Nathan Tichenor

SIBYL COHEN, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires - Perhaps more subtle than Juan Tessi's work, but no less powerful, Sibyl Cohen’s giant canvases (roughly 7'X7') delineate vast and palatial interiors. While they might be empty like Videla’s, her spaces do not resonate with the absence of figures. Instead, her paintings are of space itself. They masterfully exemplify the ever-persistent miracle of reproducing the three dimensions of the outside world onto the two dimensions of the painting’s surface. Or, vice versa, they transform the two-dimensions of the painting’s surface via the illusion of the three dimensions of the outside world.

And, more precisely, we can feel the tension when that reproduction and transformation happens. Cohen's illusion is not perfect: it oscillates between the abstract two-dimensional shapes on the canvas and the illusion of three-dimensional space these shapes can trick our eye into believing. Her paintings seem to represent that very moment when illusion begins to gel.

Cohen’s large scale and prominent line depict a space that draws in and surrounds the viewer. This, combined with her matte surfaces, recalls frescoes, especially those of the Italian Renaissance. As a time when horizons – geographic and philosophic – were broadened and the wonder of discovery infused all practices, this Renaissance wonder in turn imbues Cohen’s paintings. So while her interiors might seem old and formal, they are nonetheless transformed anew. By way of perspective and paint, Cohen gives us that same sense of dizzying Renaissance awe when confronted with the illusion of vast space.

Nathan Tichenor

JUAN TESSI, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires - Juan Tessi’s work pulls no punches – especially his series of small paintings (roughly 8"X11") of boys behaving badly. Boys on the cusp of manhood – in various stages of undress – tie up, strangle, and have sex with other boys (and sometimes girls). When only one figure appears in the painting, it’s clear from the engaged yet absent expression that something is being done to him, or he’s watching something being done to someone else. All his figures are completely engrossed in the act – be it sexual or violent or both. And Tessi captures that un-posed absence of self-consciousness of someone in the exact moment of fulfilling desire.

Like Juan Videla’s paintings, Tessi’s dialogues with photography and, moreover, video. But Tessi’s images come from pornography – a form that commands viewing – and by co-opting this genre, he crystallizes painting’s punch. One way we safely consume and know our world – one way we safely fulfill our desires – is through looking at art. And the analogy to the consumption of pornography is apt. Tessi mediates the pornographic/photographic image through paint thereby making the subject of his work not the pornography’s sex or violence, but rather the desire itself. We are no longer selflessly engrossed: through his paintings we end up looking at ourselves looking.

Nathan Tichenor

JUAN VIDELA, Braga Menendez Contemporaneo

Buenos Aires - Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo recently showed Juan Videla’s new paintings (22"X28") of empty public spaces. Almost still-lives of nothingness, the paintings are so empty of people that their absence becomes a felt presence. Trains, restaurant kitchens, building hallways – spaces usually occupied – are depicted without figures, seemingly late at night, after a shift or rush hour. The rooms’ overhead fluorescents highlight their emptiness, and we can almost feel the energy that, now gone, once filled the room. Each image could easily be a still from a Kubrick film, whose rooms often resonate with the psychic imprint of previous, intense incidents.

Clearly Videla can paint. He achieves a perfect tension between painterliness and an almost-photographic realism. And his work’s relation to photography seems to highlight painting’s dominance in Buenos Aires: Videla might flirt with photography’s language, but they remain paintings. I think all really good paintings have an impact like a punch in the stomach. But instead of punching, Videla’s painting withholds – both its punch and figures – and thereby these absences only heighten their presences, creating a very engaging tension.

Nathan Tichenor

BRAGA MENENDEZ ARTE CONTEMPORANEO

Buenos Aires - Recently I visited Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo, perhaps Buenos Aires’ best-known gallery for contemporary art. When Guido Ignatti (Produccion de Exposiciones) invited me into the gallery’s office, it became clear that the young and playful tone is clearly not limited to the art they represent. While the gallery takes contemporary art seriously, their passionate yet casual atmosphere also insists that art should have nothing to do with intimidation. The gallery’s backroom is an embarrassment of riches. This office-cum-salon-cum-gallery-cum-studio is crammed full of works -- most good, some spectacular -- that emerge one by one after careful but relaxed exploration.

And the gallery’s embarrassment of riches is embarrassing not only because there is so much high-quality work to choose from and see, but also because the prices are so damn reasonable. Even after accounting for shipping and brokerage, the strength of the dollar, euro, and pound against the Argentine peso makes art-buying in Buenos Aires an incredible opportunity.

Especially if you want to buy paintings. Even after taking into account Braga Menendez’s taste for and expertise in painters, I get the impression that Buenos Aires is about Paint. The city seems to have produced (and is producing) an inordinate number of really good painters. Moreover, this is a town of representation. There is a fascination with the image, and with mediating that image through the artist, his brush, and his paint.

Nathan Tichenor