carlos miranda, london
Friday 19 July 2019
Abandon'Arte: A Casa Retro
Todo o blogue é muitíssimo interessante e de um grande valor documental. Parabéns pelo excelente trabalho.
Sunday 3 August 2014
Three sculptural highlights from the Summer Exhibition 2014 at the Royal Academy
'Twinkle' by Cathie Pilkington, by Cathie Pilkington,
via www.royalacademy.org.uk
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There would be lots to say about the salon model and its
applicability to the current situation in the arts. A deep immersive
experience, it can go from just bearable to absolutely annoying, if your lenses
have been utterly formatted by the white cube mode of display. Yet there is a
lot to save here, including the fact this is per se, the perpetuation of the
legacy of a great institution, a formidable institutional act that has never
ceased since its creation, in 1769.
However the most interesting virtue is perhaps the most
obvious one – to render democratic a prestigious stage, in a time in which
aesthetics often overlaps and confounds itself with processes of recognition and
reputation. But the show lives not only through unknown artists and precisely
one of the appeals to the mass of artists who submit work each year is to
exhibit side by side with artists like Anselm Kiefer, whose oeuvre can be
appreciated soon in the same space, from 27th September.
Not occupying exactly the same axial position as the
German artist, but also widely known, there are the three artists I believe you
have to observe closer, as you make your way through the show, where normally
painting takes primacy, all of them newly elected RA (in this 2014 show there
is an unprecedented emphasis on new Academicians).
'Fertility Figure' by Tim Shaw, via
@TimShawSculptor
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Cathie Pilkington’s (born 1968) work often makes use of
unsuspected combinations of materials and includes ready-made parts, in a
peculiar reinvention of the craft. Her sculptures often dwell close to toys, in
their shapes and in their evocative motives and evocations. They form a
visionary universe of fable, and prove the strength of the uncanny. Her
characters seem to inhabit a magical state of flux – as indeed do her methods.
“Thinking and making is the same thing,” as she stated (see http://issuu.com/whosjack/docs/wj47/77).
'Cake Man (II)' by Yinka Shonibare,
picture: Matt Writtle,
via www.world-arts.com
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Tim Shaw RA (born 1964) presents a series of hooded
figurines and a life size sculpture that references magical rituals, and is also
a result of his reflection on history and politics, often directly inspired by
current events. He has created a singular language that by poetically
transporting us to a mythic time speaks to us about the necessity of recreating
our life as planetary species. On another register, Cake Man II by Yinka
Shonibare, (born 1962) suggests the transience and contradiction of a
facet of our world, less and less taken for granted. His stagings evolve around
several aspects of globalization, usually with an emphasis on post-colonial and
African identities. His work has an eminent political meaning, disruptive and
hopefully ethical. In fact, unlike Cathie Pilkington’s “cautionary tales” his
visual allegories seem to appeal in both their structure and content, to a
moral re-reading of the social – conveying a message, in the classic
assumption.
Even though not far apart generationally the three artists offer
a spectrum from a situation where poetics is an imperative, to the reification
of politics. As long as you do not feel overloaded by the excess of visual
information provoked by twelve hundred works, selected from ten times more,
climbing the walls and filling every space available, it can be a very
enjoyable experience, and above all diverse in its core.
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