SANTIAGO SIERRA – IMPENETRABLE STRUCTURE

Posted on 2017-07-10

For the past two decades, Santiago Sierra has carried out provocative actions around the world. Known for his politically and socially charged work, Sierra returns to Lisson Gallery London to debut a large-scale, site-specific installation that continues the artist’s interest in borders and displacement. Titled Impenetrable Structure, the grid-like installation is constructed out of military razor wire, similar to what is used to create security perimeters between countries and in war zones. The work fills the entire gallery space of 27 Bell Street, entered by visitors only one at a time, creating an environment in which access is restricted or entirely denied.

After studying Fine Arts in Madrid, Sierra moved to Hamburg as a guest of the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK). It was there that he first became enthralled with the serialised arrangements of industrial containers while wondering around the harbour area of the city and where he also encountered a large community of immigrants and the mass displacement of foreigners for the first time. Influenced by the formal language of the Minimal and Conceptual art movements of the 1960s and ’70s, Sierra then began making geometrical structures using industrial materials to comment on issues posed by the borders of nation-states, temporary settlements and military bases.

Exhibition runs through to August 26th, 2017

Lisson Gallery
27 Bell Street
NW1 5BY
London

www.lissongallery.com

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TAKESADA MATSUTANI

Posted on 2017-07-10

From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, Matsutani was a key member of the ‘second generation’ of the Gutai Art Association (1954 – 1972), Japan’s innovative and influential art collective of the post-war era. One of the most important Japanese artists still working today, Matsutani continues to demonstrate the spirit of Gutai throughout his practice, conveying the reciprocity between pure gesture and raw material.

‘In Gutai Art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance. Matter never compromises itself with the spirit; the spirit never dominates matter,’ stated Jiro Yoshihara, founder of the Gutai Art Association, in his ‘Gutai Art Manifesto’ (1956).

Exemplary of his commitment to the Gutai ethos is Matsutani’s lifelong artistic exploration with polyvinyl acetate adhesive, otherwise known as Elmer’s glue. Harnessing the rapid economic and technological growth of post-WWII Japan, a young Matsutani chose to explore the expressive opportunities of vinyl glue, a material that first entered mass production in the early 1960s. In his earliest experiments, Matsutani impregnated the canvas surface with bulbous elements, using his own breath to create swollen and ruptured forms evocative of flesh and wounds.

Opposite – Work-C, 1971

Exhibition runs through to September 17th, 2017

Hauser & Wirth
901 East 3rd Street
90013 Los Angeles

www.hauserwirthlosangeles.com

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ZANDER BLOM – NEW WORKS

Posted on 2017-07-10

Blom’s sustained explorations into the developments of abstraction in twentieth century Modernist art movements have, until now, resulted in a diverse range of strictly nonfigurative experiments in painting, most recently taking the form of geometric and minimalist abstraction. This exhibition of new work marks an important point of departure for Blom as the figurative elements from his drawing practices have entered the realm of his paintings for the first time, symbolizing a critical disengagement with pure abstraction.
At the center of this exhibition is a large format installation of pages torn from old Mondrian catalogues and defaced with Blom’s drawings of dinosaurs, aliens and other childishly rebellious icons. Writing in Blom’s second catalogué raisonne, Nicola Trezzi considers how these drawings allow one to really understand the complex and contradictory nature of his art: ‘If Blom’s paintings can be considered his ‘representation’, affirming his position, as a painter, as an artist, to the world, his drawings are his ‘will’, the thing behind the veil, the magmatic truth, the lava beneath our terrestrial crust.’
These iconoclastic scribbles, which animate Blom’s Piet Mondrian drawings, have now moved across to his paintings, to deface his ordered geometric abstractions, and to question his own approach to painting. For Trezzi, this is a taste of Blom’s ‘bestial modernity’, a desire ‘to make works that take modernity to its ultimate state, which is, despite its premises, wild, animalistic, primal and instinctive’. These paintings of ‘bestial modernity’ are shown alongside his characteristic abstractions of oil on raw Belgian linen, with his signature technique of making painting that look digitally rendered.

Exhibition runs through to September 2nd, 2017

Galerie Hans Mayer
Grabbeplatz 2
40213 Düsseldorf
Germany

www.galeriehansmayer.de

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