Superb Painters: HERNÁN ARDILA

Anyone who follows this journal has noticed that posts have been rare lately. My recent studio schedule has made it hard to find time for other projects. So this summer I will post a series of features that focus on excellent, but somewhat lesser known painters who I think everyone should know. Here is the first Superb Painter:

Born in 1964 in Colombia, Hernán Ardilo lives and works in Barcelona. His work combines a distinctive color sense with an adept sensitivity to materials to create highly charged dynamic configurations. In the past few years, he has expanded his scope from self-contained oil paintings to wonderful installations of diverse but related objects that activate the space with color and rhythm.

Images from the artist's website.

RACHEL HAYES

Rachel Hayes, Choo Fence, Monticello, NY


Rachel Hayes, Duality of Light Without Violence, 2008

Rachel Hayes, Rainbow Quarry, Colorado Springs

If you can imagine a body of work that is the offspring of Robert Irwin and Alan Shields (remember him?), it might look something like the work of Rachel Hayes. Using translucent colored fabric, she activates spaces and sites with layered saturated color and light, and sensuous handmade tactility. Her deep sensitivity to the inherent sociological and psychologocal resonance of materials and processes imbues her work with a primal congruence that can transform our sense of place and self. Images from the artist's website.

JIM LEE at Freight & Volume

Jim Lee, Untitled (In the Crease), 2009, oil enamel on canvas over honeycomb cardboard

Jim Lee, Untitled (Under Olive), 2008, 13 x 7 x 10 inches, acrylic & canvas over polystyrene

Jim Lee, Installation with Untitled (Hydropod) 2009, Untitled (Charlie's Atlas) 2009, Longest Hour 2008

Just opened at Freight and Volume on 24th Street is a whole new batch by Jim Lee, a collection of eccentrically beautiful objects, built in his trademark beguilingly offhanded fashion. As with all of Jim's exhibitions, the installation is an assertive aspect of the show, with the gallery space being altered in a manner consistent with the way the pieces are constructed. Rough plywood partitions create small niches around the entrance, a temporary drywall closes off the reception desk leaving a slim vertical portal to the back room. In the center of the space a diagonally placed plywood wall goes floor to ceiling, and is braced by a collection of jury rigged 2x4s. Within this space, the works are arranged to move the viewer up, down, around and through -- they are leaned against the wall or hung at varying heights singly and in groups creating distinctly odd and surprising synchopations and relations.

The pieces themselves occupy a strange ambiguous realm. They are formally simple and eloquent, with dynamic tensions between large color fields and small linear or geometric elements, smoothe surfaces and frayed edges, painted shapes and found configurations. Physically, they are down and dirty, seemingly quick and direct, with every aspect of their makeup left visible. Yet the method of their construction is invested with a ritualized specificity -- a deliberate and insistent scruffiness that reads as a sort of imperative, and emphasizes the process of making as pure transformative necessity. Each piece reveals itself as a reconfiguration of discarded (or saved) fragments, a poetic reordering of the most basic elements of the world.

Also present in Jim Lee's working method is a pervasive sense of play, and an abiding amusement with the serendipitous aspects of reality -- with the possiblity of finding some new kind of resonance in the most unlikely places. We can imagine him sporting a sly grin as he makes these funky objects, as he chops a corner out of a painting with a utility knife and then staples it roughly back into place. And it is that willingness to destroy or disregard the conventions, to look elsewhere, that constantly renews his work, keeping it on the edge of disintegration, unpredictable, and always thrilling to see. In the back room of the gallery, Jim has posted a small chunk of paper with a hand-lettered manifesto: "IF IT'S GOING TO BE SHIT, I'M GOING TO DOT THE I'S AND CROSS THE T'S". So there you go -- he transforms shit into THE SHIT.

ROBERT IRWIN at PaceWildenstein

Robert Irwin, Red Drawing White Drawing Black Painting, 2009, Detail

The title of the new Robert Irwin installation, at the PaceWildenstein 22nd Street space through February 28, is Red Drawing White Drawing Black Painting. The huge warehouse space is divided by two massive temporary walls, forming two narrow rectangular spaces, and a third "empty" space in back. The first space greets the viewer with a wall of white flourescent light in a seemingly intuitive arrangement of diagonally placed right angles. As we move around the floating wall to enter the second space, there is a high gloss black "painting" placed on the end wall of the first space. The second space presents a similar flourescent arrangement in intense red, with a glossy black panel centered on the opposite wall. In addition to the black panels, the polished concrete floor of the space reflects the array of flourescent light causing the arrangement of shapes on the walls to continue onto the floor in reverse. The black panels are not large, but offer compressed glimpses in which the reflective light and space close the loop and contain themselves, and simultaneously, allow and encourage oblique and changing ponts of view. Compared with the stealth and subtlety of much of Irwin's earlier work, this piece at first might seem overly flashy (forgive the pun). But the flash is only in the medium; there's nothing tricky going on here. Irwin is offering the viewer a moment of pure sensation -- light, space, color, reflection, movement -- a heightened sense of one's own presence and perception -- a small chunk of consciousness, isolated and enlarged.

CORDY RYMAN and RICHARD TUTTLE:Exalted Ephemera

Cordy Ryman, Yellow Spine, 2008, 144 x 3 x 8 inches, mixed media on wood

Just opened at DCKT Contemporary is a new show by Cordy Ryman, whose work I've followed and enjoyed for a while. Although it seems obvious to consider his work in relation to the legacy of his illustrious parents (Robert Ryman and Merrill Wagner), I feel he has a much more direct affinity with the aesthetic of another member of his parents' generation, Richard Tuttle. In fact seeing Ryman's work has always brought to mind the importance of Tuttle's contribution -- its singularity, and it's eccentricity. What the two artists share is a preference for cruddy materials, offhanded construction, consideration and activation of the whole space, and an interest in the poetry and universal resonances of the most minuscule moments.

Richard Tuttle, 3rd Rope Piece, 1974, 1/2 x 3 x 1/2 inches, cotton & nails
This is actually a Detail, as the whole piece consisted of the piece of rope attached about 3 feet high on a huge expanse of white wall.

This aesthetic ground was boldly articulated in 1975 by Richard Tuttle in his infamous Whitney exhibition that cost Marcia Tucker her curatorial job. It was, and still is, one of the most radical museum shows I've ever seen -- pushing the envelope of ephemerality to the edge of nothingness. I remember Marcia Tucker saying that Tuttle showed up to install this sprawling exhibition with the whole show contained in his shoulder bag. It was a thrilling experience to see the cavernous spaces of the Whitney activated by Tuttle's near-invisible poetic interventions. The show was like a koan, presented by a highly accomplished Zen monk with a wry sense of humor. In later years, Tuttle has continued to explore a kind of enchantment with the most basic elements of formal relations and materials, making funky little constructions out of plywood and found stuff, minimally manipulated into magically charged configurations. It is mostly with this later work that Cordy Ryman's affinities seem to be evident. Like Tuttle, Cordy is committed to "modest" materials -- stuff that might come out of most artists' trash bin -- and a sort of stream of consciousness compositional method -- essentially improvisational, and in some ways a bit less precious and deliberate than Tuttle.

Cordy Ryman, Stitched Block, 2008, 8 x 7 x 3 inches, acrylic & enamel on wood

Cordy Ryman, V5, 2008, 23 x 11 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches, acrylic, enamel & velcro on wood

Richard Tuttle, New Mexico, New York, D, #9, 1998, 30 1/4 x 21 3/8 inches, acrylic on plywood

Richard Tuttle, Section 1, Extension 0, 2007, 8 1/4 x 4 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches, mixed media

Underlying both Ryman's and Tuttle's approaches we find a highly sensitized awareness of the nuances of formal relations and of the physical properties of materials (Tuttle's grounding in Minimalism, and Ryman's inheritance from his parents) -- and an ability to call our attention to the larger implications inherent in the fundamental relations among the smallest aspects of common things.

Cordy Ryman, Checker, 2008, 48 x 46 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches, acrylic & velcro on wood

Cordy Ryman, V5, 2008, 23 x 11 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches, acrylic, enamel, velcro on wood

Richard Tuttle, Two With Any To, #19, 1999, 11 x 11 x 1 3/4 inches, acrylic on fir plywood

Richard Tuttle, Source of Imagery:V, 1995, 26 x 27 inches, wood & acrylic

PIPILOTTI RIST at MoMA

Pipilotti Rist, Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), 2008, Installation at MoMA

I can't think of a better way to start the new year than spending time with the new Pipilotti Rist piece in the 2nd floor atrium at MoMA. For my money, Rist is one of the most compelling artists out there, and with this work she really outdoes herself. The installation, titled Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), is a complex and layered multi-media environment that transforms the great expanse of MoMA's atrium into a sense-around lounge of the highest order. Combining huge vacillating video projections on the three walls with a softly throbbing soundtrack emanating from a womb-like seating/reclining area in the center of the room, Rist offers a trippy collective excursion into pure sense-ation.

Pipilotti Rist, Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), 2008, Installation at MoMA

The central metaphor of the piece is water -- as vehicle or essence of life in all its richness, and fluidity -- as an integrated state of being. The visually stunning and utterly engrossing images modulate constantly in a kaleidoscopic flow of high-key color, organic forms and movement, perpetually morphing and shifting. The soundtrack is a combination of vocal and electronic drones and melodic wisps that form a soft blanket of ambient sound, inviting us to stop, take a deep breath, and just be there for a while. To reinforce this invitation, Rist has installed a large doughnut shaped sofa in the center, and asked viewers to remove their shoes and settle in.

Pipilotti Rist, Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), 2008, Installation at MoMA

If this sounds all too ... new age -- well, let me say that verbal description simply cannot convey the totality of the experience of this piece. The teeming throngs of people lounging, strolling, just hanging out below the giant undulating saturated color images create a free-flowing, breathing fusion of humanity and sensuousness that is distinctly separate from the institutional starkness of the rest of the museum. This is a knockout piece of monumental poetry -- an exquisite incantation that reinforces in our bodies and minds the experience and awareness of a pervasive interconnected sensuality.

ACCIDENT BLACKSPOTAt Freight and Volume

Keltie Ferris, Rock Steady, 2008, 32" x 26", oil & enamel on canvas

Installation with Fawn Krieger (floor), Ecke, 2007, 31" x 28.75" x 7.5", wood, vinyl flooring, hardware

Tamara Zahaykevich, Trill(m), 2007, 19" x 21" x 3.5", foam board, acrylic, paper, polystyrene, wood filler, glue

Named after the British term designating the site of an accident, Accident Blackspot is a new exhibition at Freight & Volume in Chelsea, curated by Jim Lee and Rob Nadeau. The show includes the work of 13 artists who work in a variety of approaches, but all with a particular emphasis on found or common materials, and casual execution. I’d say there are really 15 artists here, since the curators, although they do not include their own works, have made the installation one of the most distinctive aspects of the show. It is really as an installation that this show operates, minimizing the focus on individual works in favor of a total dynamic environment that is comprised of a collection of interacting works. The installation actually looks like a Jim Lee show, but using other artists’ pieces in place of Jim’s, with the same sly humor and offhanded materiality laced with inescapable formal eloquence. Not that the individual works are completely sublimated – eye catching pieces include a cast resin wall piece posing as a hunk of cardboard (complete with trompe l’oeil duct tape) by Ivin Ballen, a very chunky and colorful little oil painting by Ali Smith, a Wendy White painting with volley ball, and a beautiful lively canvas by Keltie Ferris. For me one of the standout moments is an oddly shaped floor piece by Fawn Krieger installed adjacent to a tiny photograph of what appears to be a gang rape scene, making vague unsettling and intriguing relations between the image in the photo and the sculptural configuration. My favorite work in the show is an extremely funky wall piece by Tamara Zahaykevich that looks to be made of a combination of stuff from the garbage, and has a playfully self-possessed and animated presence.

If there is a common aesthetic in this show, it is somehow related to a willingness to fail, or possibly the disregard of such determinations as success or failure. But these artists are not naïve, they are truly enamored with the ephemera they employ and the randomness they bring to their well-schooled and refined sensibilities. And in this exhibition, they end up looking elegant in spite of themselves.