DAMIÁN ORTEGA

Posted on 2016-07-18

Born in 1967 in Mexico City, Damián Ortega is one of the most prominent artists of the new Mexican generation. His work prioritises action over object, seeking to call attention to the dynamism of the world around us, and the hidden poetry in the everyday. For The Fruitmarket Gallery’s summer exhibition, Ortega is making new sculptures focusing on how the forces of nature–wind, water, earth and fire–act on the earth both independently of and in relationship to humankind.

The works in the exhibition are predominantly made from clay, the most elemental of materials. Ortega uses clay to form waves, sculpt icebergs and to track the eroding power of a river on a sequence of plains made from brick. He shows us the sculptural agency of nature and also of mankind, looking at how the landscape has shaped itself but also at how mankind’s attempts to harness the land to our own purpose have played a part in the state of the world now.

A major new sculpture presents a bewildering array of tools, made from seemingly unfired clay and laid out on tables as if they had just been unearthed in an archaeological dig. The tools move from the most “primitive” to the most “sophisticated,” from representations of flint arrowheads to clay facsimiles of mobile phones in a work that is both a celebration of the skill that sets us apart from other animals and a visual history of our exploitation of the natural world.

Opposite – Eroded valley (detail), 2016

Exhibition runs through till October 23rd, 2016

The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street
Edinburgh
EH1 1DF

www.fruitmarket.co.uk

   Tweet

SHIRLEY TSE – LIFT ME UP SO I CAN SEE BETTER

Posted on 2016-07-18

Taking Oscar Wilde’s 1888 book “The Happy Prince and Other Tales” as her point of departure, Tse’s new body of work evokes the form of eyeballs as her sculptures address both seeing and the position from which one sees. As an adult re-reading this story, Tse was struck by the Prince’s ability to see “all the ugliness and misery of [his] city” once he was set up high on a column outside the walls of his Palace. Tse perceives Wilde’s parable as particularly prescient of our socio-economic climate, where gaps between classes and cultures are widening at an alarming rate. Analogous to Wilde’s townspeople, who were gifted the Prince’s sapphire eyes and rubies from his sword, Tse received an unexpected gift of blown glass remnants from the Estate of Miriam Wosk, a recently deceased artist. Contemplating the possibility that generosity may flow if one is able to see from a different vantage point, Tse utilizes the gestures of ascending, reaching and telescoping with the incorporation of C-stands, boom microphone stands, tripods, and stadium bleachers throughout the exhibition. Seeking a broader perspective also suggests the possibility of turning passive spectatorship into active spectatorship. Various colors of glass chunks housed in different materials exhibit themselves as heterogeneous sculptures hovering between the figurative and the abstract, the found objects and the imagined forms, the literal and the metaphorical.

Opposite – The Vehicle Series: #5, 2016

Exhibition runs through till September 3rd, 2016

Shoshana Wayne Gallery
Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue B1
Santa Monica
Los Angeles, CA
CA 90404

shoshanawayne.com

   Tweet

YURI PATTISON – USER, SPACE

Posted on 2016-07-18

The exhibition comprises an immersive installation occupying the entire gallery. A wall of industrial racking, often used in large global distribution warehouses, acts as a support structure for the installation. The racking system houses a bank of networked computers that control LED and natural light to create an artificially accelerated loop of a standard working day. The computers also synchronise and control playback across multiple device-sized screens, which display a series of new video works in which Pattison contrasts abstracted views of contemporary workspaces, with the interiors of experimental living spaces.

Throughout his residency, Pattison has been working within the evolving ecology of East London’s Tech City; a technology cluster also referred to as Silicon Roundabout, where new initiatives have emerged as popular sites of shared workspace for growing tech and creative start-up companies. Pattison has also been working within London Hackspace – a community run space for skill sharing and workshops – as a means to explore the politics of shared workspace representative of wider global trends in alternative hackerspace communities, the ethos of which is echoed in contemporary start-up companies and increased mobile working.

Opposite – user, space (2016)

Exhibition runs through till August 28th, 2016

Chisenhale Gallery
64 Chisenhale Road
London
E3 5QZ

www.chisenhale.org.uk

   Tweet