I haven't been blogging since June. I just had the worst summer. I decided that if I want to get back in my University course I have really got to start again blogging. I have been thinking... how can I do the last year at University if I can't even concentrate on basic things? So I thought if at least I can start back on my blog maybe later I can start working back on my thesis again; so here I am. The first exhibition I got to see is the one by Brazilian artist Adriano Costa (BA Universidade de Sao Paolo) at Sadie Coles Gallery, titled: Touch me I am Geometrically Sensitive. It was the first time I went in the Sadie Coles Gallery in Kingly Street which is at the back of Carnaby street, in a street full of restaurants and bars, very centrally located. From inside the gallery one can see busy Regent Street; it is easy to get to. Inside the exhibition space most of Costa's work is shown together in one large room; the works are closely displayed so that you really can't focus long on one particular work.
His work was made over a period of two months while he was staying in London which was to lead to the exhibition, and using all sorts of objects that he could find around from rugs to bricks, but I feel that some of the objects he chose were not just found but purchased especially in one particular piece called Bartira/Suggestion for Furniture - here the ladders looked brand new and also in Untitled, which undermines a bit of the spontaneous concept implied by the Gallery in their leaflet and by most art critics: 'mostly gathered in situ - harness of everyday daily objects', yes he does use some daily objects but it is not spontaneous work, it is thought through and is not entirely whatever was to hand for inspiration. I would say Adriano Costa is also a 'conceptual/referential artist': he reminded me of Brazilian modernist Helio Oiticica in his use of plants and wood and in the tea towel tapestry, and there is also reference in his work to Carl Andre'.
Overall the room looks busy and messy because all the works are so closely put together so I didn't feel I could focus much on one piece. He combines a different range of forms, materials (mainly industrial), and colours but the colours are not really dominant in his work, form and materials and geometrical shape have priority in his work.
Some works are bigger in scale than others, some are suspended while others are more earth bound.In some of his work, by using common materials and being playful with their combination like putting foam inside Perspex, suspending socks for example, he is showing how a supposedly uninteresting material can be made into art, but this is not a new idea it has been done before. Even if the work is playful I really didn't feel it was 'art of the incidental' like the Gallery states, it is not at all, it is well thought out one can see this by the way the work is positioned in the space. There are paintings made into geometrical patterns; some work better then others but I didn't feel they added anything to the rest or added anything new to what has been done before by other artists. I felt they were the weak link in the exhibition;
I mean they were really average, like the squares on a board, and the artwork called Norwegian Cheese (pic. above), they didn't add much to the other pieces; also the newspaper cut out and frames with some of the things happening during his stay in London in the news added nothing more to the exhibition. What's the point of this? Is he trying to say that a lot of contemporary art is useless? Which seems to me the opposite of what he says in his other work. He said that he used the newspaper cut-outs to understand the country he is living in, which I find odd. I don't think you can really understand a country by only living in it for two months and cutting things out from a newspaper and then by framing them he is saying anything can be art and he is making fun of the art world, despite showing his work in a major art gallery. But the rough newspaper cut outs and the dark smartly polished frame didn't really go together and he has made a point in previous exhibitions of not using frames or pedestals as part of his work as he said in interviews, so what he is doing now is not consistent with what he has done before.
He did use some recycled materials, polythene bags recycled from different London Boroughs so basically using them in a different way. What I do question is the fact that the way he uses the materials is not really ground breaking and has been done before by other British artists. Why is a major British gallery asking a Brasilian artist to do work about London instead of showing hs work about Brasil which is better?!
There are a lot of artists in London in British Universities working on similar concepts in very innovative and interesting ways but they don't seem to be taken by some major British Galleries, there are hardly any major galleries going around universities in London to see what is available; they seem to prefer taking artists from the USA and Germany mainly or from other countries. So I really do feel bad about a lot of English students that are paying £9000 per year with poor studio space who don't have access to studio space outside of University because they can't afford the high fees in London and on top of that galleries don't even look at their work or promote them, and there are hardly any scholarsips or sponsorships for art students but they are getting charged the same as students of other faculties who don't have to spend money on art materials.
And they have to compete also with a lot of other artists from Europe who don't pay the £9000 per year fees but only up to £1800 and they have to compete with Scottish students who pay only £1800 per year. I think English art students are currently really badly treated in their own country which opens the door to another argument: that of the politics in the art world on how they choose artists. I am amazed by the dedication of a lot of British art students at my University who work hard to achieve the best in really difficult financial circumstances.
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