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David Rabinowitch

“6 Sided Plane in 5 Masses and 3 Scales with 2 Free Regions
The drawings also clarify the schema underlying the locations of the bored holes in the sculptures. Situated along lines linking vertices at the perimeter of the forms, they recall constellation maps or, as with 8 Sided Plane in 7 Masses and 2 Scales with Free Region (1975/2018), the plans of Romanesque cathedrals. Here, again, the relationship is inverted. The black shapes representing the solid stone columns in the plans echo the shafts of air bored through the steel. The term “Romanesque” appears frequently in Rabinowitch’s titles. Though absent here, the conglomeration of shapes visible in Romanesque church plans, like those of Cluny in France, bear an affinity with the additive sensibility evident in Rabinowitch’s structures. Donald Kuspit has focused attention on the artist’s interest in Northwest Coast traditions, especially the totem pole. Like the totem pole, Rabinowitch’s works manifest a “disrupted continuum,” a whole built out of distinct parts. For me, the presence of the drawings in this exhibition subtly undermined that assertion. The lines along which the bored holes are situated form a network that passes over all (or at least most) of the components in each work, in effect linking them. Though no longer visible in the steel versions, the connective links act as a reminder of this second related principle of organization. Some may see it as a complication, a discrepancy, or be disappointed by the realization, but I think it helps demystify these “new” early sculptures. At the same time, the proximity of the studies by no means diminished the deep-rooted and intriguing complexity of Rabinowitch’s sculptural work.”John Gayer

Abel Gance

Napoleon

Kevin Brownlow’ restoration

Gance embarked on his greatest project, a six-part life of Napoléon. Only the first part was completed, tracing Bonaparte’s early life, through the Revolution, and up to the invasion of Italy, but even this occupied a vast canvas with meticulously recreated historical scenes and scores of characters. The film was full of experimental techniques, combining rapid cutting, hand-held cameras, superimposition of images, and, in wide-screen sequences, shot using a system he called Polyvision needing triple cameras (and projectors), achieved a spectacular panoramic effect, including a finale in which the outer two film panels were tinted blue and red, creating a widescreen image of a French flag. The original version of the film ran for around 6 hours. A shortened version received a triumphant première at the Paris Opéra in April 1927 before a distinguished audience that included the future General de Gaulle. The length was reduced still further for French and European distribution, and it became even shorter when it was shown in America. Napoleon is a silent film directed by Abel Gance, dramatising the youth and early career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Its most complete screening, said to be nine hours long, took place in Paris in 1927 – but this version was subsequently lost. British film-maker Kevin Brownlow saw a version as a schoolboy and subsequently restored the film to close to its original length from various prints. His restoration was first shown in London in 1980 with a score by Carl Davis.

OLAFUR ELIASSON

オラファー·エリアソン
اولافور الياسون
奥拉维尔·埃利亚松
אולאפור אליאסון
Олафур Элиассон
Infinite Staircase (Umschreibung)

Permanently installed in the atrium of an office building in Munich, two spiral staircases interlock with each other, creating a continuous loop in the form of a double helix. To plan the work, a double helix was projected onto the surface of a sphere. The heights of the steps vary slightly to compensate for the curvature of the staircases, growing shallower at the poles. Precise engineering was necessary to enable the structure to balance on one point.
The continuous loop of Umschreibung contrasts starkly with the office courtyard in Munich where it is installed. Umschreibung – which can be translated as ‘circumscription’ or ‘periphrasis’ – proposes a movement without destination, a space defined by motion rather than walls.

olafur eliasson

オラファー·エリアソン
اولافور الياسون
奥拉维尔·埃利亚松
אולאפור אליאסון
ОЛАФУР ЭЛИАССОН
earth perspectives
The earth as viewed from above the SouthPole, one of nine-part series
The pole is at the heart of the virtually uninhabited continent of Antarctica, a vital ice-covered wildlife haven that is under threat from rapid warming and ice loss.

ecoLogicStudio

H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g in-human garden
H.O.R.T.U.S. XL Astaxanthin.g is a large scale, high-resolution 3D printed bio-sculpture receptive to both human and non-human life. The project is conceived by Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto (ecoLogicStudio) and developed in collaboration with the Synthetic Landscape Lab at the University of Innsbruck.

EVGENY KAZANTSEV

Evgeny Kazantsev é um artista russo. Trabalhando como ilustrador, diretor de arte e designer gráfico, ele desenvolve trabalhos em publicidade, ilustrações e artes conceituais. Evgeny Kazantsev cria ilustrações com um estilo realista, não raramente usando foto-manipulação digital (photoshop) para dar um ar ainda mais real às suas criações. Em duas séries de ilustrações desenvolvidas para uma companhia de seguros, o artista criou imagens que mostram duas facetas do que pode ser o nosso futuro, no melhor estilo ficção científica realista. Em “Past in the Future” (Passado no Futuro), Evgeny Kazantsev imagina como objetos e locais reais de nosso tempo irão se desenvolver no futuro, mostrando, por exemplo, como trens magnéticos voadores irão cortar os ares, como as megalópoles se desenvolverão, como o espaço será explorado para mineração, entre outros. É uma visão otimista do futuro, com toques de ficção científica baseadas na realidade.

Kevin Beasley

Strange Fruit
Using both sculpture and musical performance in his practice, Kevin Beasley explores the physical materiality and cultural connotations of both objects and sound. His sculptures typically incorporate everyday items like clothing, housewares, or sporting goods, bound together using tar, foam, resin, or other materials. Often they also contain embedded audio equipment that warps and amplifies the ambient tones of their surroundings. For Storylines, Beasley has created two new works specifically for the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building. Within this vast and open sonic environment, Strange Fruit (Pair 1) and Strange Fruit (Pair 2) (both 2015) offer an experience of intimacy, absorbing and reflecting the sound of the crowd at the scale of a personal conversation. Each work embodies this spirit of dialogue in its two-part structure—at its core are two athletic shoes, one merged with microphones, the other with speakers. Suspending these objects in space, Beasley compounds their technological interchange with additional layers of meaning, bringing to mind the urban phenomenon of shoes hanging from overhead wires or poles (itself an open-ended form of communication). At the same time the works’ titles refer to history of lynchings in the American South memorialized by Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meerepol in the 1937 protest song “Strange Fruit.” In these contexts, the hanging forms of Beasley’s sculptures resonate not only with his body, which molded them by hand, or with the bodies moving through the museum, but also with those inscribed in the problematic history of race and class in the United States.

ÉTIENNE-LOUIS BOULLÉE

Cénotaphe à Newton

Boullée promoted the idea of making architecture expressive of its purpose, a doctrine that his detractors termed architecture parlante (“talking architecture”), which was an essential element in Beaux-Arts architectural training in the later 19th century. His style was most notably exemplified in his proposal for a cenotaph (a funerary monument celebrating a figure interred elsewhere) for the English scientist Isaac Newton, who 50 years after his death became a symbol of Enlightenment ideas. The building itself was a 150 m (500 ft) tall sphere, taller than the Great Pyramids of Giza, encompassed by two large barriers circled by hundreds of cypress trees. The massive and spheric shape of the building was inspired by Boullée’s own study called “theory of bodies” where he claims that the most beautiful and perfect natural body is the sphere, which is the most prominent element of the Newton Memorial. Though the structure was never built, Boullée had many ink and wash drawings engraved and circulated widely in the professional circles in 1784. The small sarcophagus for Newton is placed at the lower pole of the sphere. The design of the memorial is intended to create the effect of day and night. The night effect occurs when the sarcophagus is illuminated by the sunlight coming through the holes in the vaulting, giving the illusion of stars in the night sky. The day effect is an armillary sphere hanging in the center that gives off a mysterious glow. Thus, the use of light in the building’s design causes the building’s interior to change its appearance.