Sharon Eyal
Soul chain
“La pièce qui semble inspirée d’un numéro de music-hall ou de cabaret qu’elle pervertit aussitôt ne cherche pas l’élégance, ne tire pas vers la séduction aguicheuse et facile. Le geste est moins poli. Il déjoue les attentes et se moque des apparences. Le groupe transpire en permanence d’un irrépressible désir de résistance et de transgression, d’autant d’états, de sentiments intérieurs que Sharon Eyel et ses danseurs cherchent à extraire, à faire s’extirper et se libérer des corps qui exultent dans l’urgence.” Christophe Candoni
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Salt Womb
“Laut Programm bewegt sich die Ballett-Compagnie in „Salt Womb“ als Ganzes wie eine Maschine. Und wirklich: im 1. Bild dieses Stückes mit dem enigmatischen Titel stehen die Tänzer und Tänzerinnen des Basler Balletts in einem großen Halbkreis, der zu Ende gedacht wie ein Zylinder wirkt, in dessen Mitte sich ein riesiger Kolben auf und ab bewegt. Die Körper der Tänzer:innen, die sich breitbeinig stehend immer wieder auf und ab bewegen, wirken wie gefangen in einem nicht enden wollenden Kraftakt: die minutenlange, fast stoische Wiederholung einer einzigen Bewegung zu hämmernden Technobeats hat tatsächlich etwas Inhumanes… Nach und nach formieren sie sich zu einer pulsierenden Gruppe in Dauerbewegung, zu einem unheimlich wirkenden Superorganismus, aus dem sich einzelne Tänzer:innen in kurzen Solopassagen herauslösen, aber immer wieder vom Sog des Gruppenpulses aufgesogen werden.” Renate Killmann
STINE DEJA
Utero Termico
“Thermal Womb, una scultura di figura sospesa a testa in giù che richiama la pratica della crioconservazione. La struttura è infatti una replica del meccanismo utilizzato da aziende come Alcor, che prepara i corpi prima che vengano immersi nell’azoto liquido, figure congelate a tempo indefinito, in attesa che la tecnologia le raggiunga e le faccia rivivere. La componente cinematografica del lavoro rivela un paio di luminosi occhi blu, la cui unica animazione è battere le palpebre, aggiungendo uno strato basato sul tempo alla natura altrimenti statica del pezzo. Stephanie Cristello
Stine Deja
THERMAL WOMB
“Thermal Womb, a sculpture of figure suspended upside down that recalls the practice of cryopreservation. The structure is indeed a replica of the mechanism used by companies such as Alcor, which prepares bodies before they are submerged in liquid nitrogen—figures indefinitely frozen, waiting for technology to catch up and revive them. The film component of the work reveals a pair of bright blue eyes, whose only animation is to blink, adding a time-based layer to the otherwise static nature of the piece.” Stephanie Cristello
Cecilia Vicuña
Quipu Womb
Although better known as a poet in her adoptive North American home (she has lived in New York since the 1980s), Cecilia Vicuña has stayed true to her youthful calling as a genre-bending visual artist for more than forty years, and her site-specific projects highlight the artist’s talent for composing poems in space, for a visceral lyricism in three dimensions.
ERNESTO NETO
Эрнесто Нето
ارنستو نيتو
埃内斯托·内图
ארנסטו נטו
エルネスト·ネト
어네스토 네토
Humanóide
Ernesto Neto’s work reflects the participatory trend amongst Brazilian artists during the 1960s and 70s that is frequently associated with Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica. Neto’s morbid sculptures and installations consist of elastic nylon or Lycra that is stitched into various organic shapes, which unfold in a womblike fashion around the spectator. Neto comments that his sculptures suggest ‘fertility, sexuality, touching, and kissing’, as well as atmospheric associations that arise out of the particular spatial presence and detailed texture of the surfaces.
Ernesto Neto and SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS
Anthropodino
Ernesto Neto’s interactive installation anthropodino, currently on display at the Park Avenue Armory, is a massive sensual playground that invites viewers to touch the various fabrics, lie down on a large purple beanbag, walk through the womb-like structure, and smell the aromatic fabric tubes dangling from above.
Milo Moire
FLUID ECSTASY
by Peter Palm
is an artistic underwater video work by Peter Palm, which he realized on the island of Mauritius with the conceptual artist Milo Moiré. Filled with a naive sexuality, this short film lasting just under six minutes reveals surreal, grace-filled perspectives on the female nude. Beneath the surface, within the concealing element of water, nothing remains concealed.
The title “Fluid Ecstasy” describes a trance-like, natural bliss in the flow of merging.
“Fluid Ecstasy” presents a metaphysically ambivalent ambience that documents our prenatal state of becoming in the form of a visual metaphor. In an analogous notion of being, “being” is understood as that in which everything partakes, though in various ways. The origin of all life lies in water. Peter Palm shows the nude Milo Moiré in a peaceful world, comparable to our “being” in the womb prior to our birth.
Both Milo Moiré and Peter Palm have done without technical aids, with one exception … flippers, which make reference to the metamorphosis from fish to Homo sapiens.
The video was created during numerous dives.
JENNIFER RUBELL
جنيفر روبل
제니퍼 루벨
ジェニファールベル
Portrait of the Artist
Jennifer Rubell, the American artist and niece of Studio 54 co-founder Steve Rubell, brings a maternal touch to this year’s Frieze Art Fair with her autobiographical piece Portrait of the Artist. The pristine white nude, cast from steel-reinforced fibreglass, reclines like an odalisque at the Stephen Friedman Gallery stand. The sculpture is a replica of Rubell’s own eight-months-pregnant body, except it is eight metres high: the large belly, which is carved out to leave an egg-shaped void, can accommodate a fully grown adult. Spectators are able to clamber into the artwork and curl up inside as if they are the artist’s unborn child.Rubell’s intention was to create a monumental gesture of unconditional motherly love. There is a feminist statement here, too: Rubell has appropriated a style and scale historically reserved for male leaders to show, she says, “an emotion that is intensely personal and un-heroic”. The artist adds that watching members of the Frieze audience enter in the sculpture’s womb is “tremendously satisfying” – in her eyes the enlarged form was “incomplete until the first viewer entered”. Amid the hustle of Frieze’s mini-city there is something undeniably appealing about the opportunity to put your feet up in the foetal position in the name of art. Not to mention the comfort factor.
