David Hammons, White Cube, London. Civil Rights & The Black Power Movement!

This was a really exciting exhibition. In the first room upstairs there were the works made by Hammons using a basketball, these were 4 drawing using the same method against a piece of white paper. They are done on large pieces of paper; from afar they look like abstract minimalist landscapes; it’s just when you get closer that you realise that he has done the works  just by bouncing a basketball on the paper; the dirt and the dust go from the street via the ball to the white surface of the paper. 

His interest is in common, daily lives as opposed to the sterile unreal life of Institutional spaces; but with the association of Basketball with young African Americans, it also alludes to the place of African Americans in American society and the repetitive bouncing of the ball as a ritual. This specific work hints at arte Povera and American gestural abstraction. I have also been told by the gallery that behind the works the artist has put suitcases which give a sculptural dimension to the piece, one piece in particular looked like there was something behind it as it wasn’t straight, adding to the mystery of the piece or of what we can see and can’t see. For many African Americans basketball is a way out of the Ghetto but Hammons seems to say that this might just be an illusion given the way he titled the works: Traveling. The bouncing of the ball might take the African American so far, but the implication is that this is only a temporary solution. Traveling (2002), also evokes the rule of basketball that says you can't take the ball and run with it. But, could it also be hinting about belief in oneself, by bouncing the ball in the doing, instead of waiting for something to changed from outside by higher powers.

David Hammons is interested in common everyday objects and their implication in their use and also in their historical associations. In past exhibitions he has used: hair, wine bottles, his own body. His art is about movement, using a ball to make an artwork involves a movement; it is also about process and has an element of repetition as he has to continuously bounce the ball to get a pattern but it is also a freeing as he using a daily object in his life to make art. In the past I had seen his sculptural work such as Kick the Bucket 1988  & Untitled 1989 which was made out of  empty night train bottles put into a circular position of discontinued sequence on both sides, I would have liked to see this work again in the Gallery but I guess he is working on new things. Anyway the bottles allude to the fact that a drunk leaves just a trail of empty bottles, nothing else. His work is about the street. The objects, in this case empty bottles, still retain something or say something about who owned them. I find his work interesting because I also work with found objects from the street in my sculptures.

For example when he set himself up in1983 to sell different size snow balls on the sidewalk outside Cooper Union in 1983 after a Blizzard, people actually bought them, the artist didn’t set the price and the public bought the snowballs at whatever price, bypassing the gallery setting; it was done in the street and was easily accessible by anybody that passed by at that time. It questioned the objectification and commercialisation of art through art collecting, especially by the wealthy. It seems to me that Hammons is interested also in shaking up convention or what is seen as conventional. 

Downstairs for example in the White Cube Gallery are not paintings but rugs covering a canvas, a rug (tarpaulin & plastic) that could have been used to cover a  homeless person. His materials tell a story of the streets, this makes you think of the people living in the streets, or outside of society, there is tension between the painted surface underneath and the broken rugs lying on top of the canvas. It makes you think of a marginalised life, but also of how by putting the broken rugs centre stage they become like a ritual, they gain strength or a form of self-empowerment. He doesn’t have a dealer and has turned down offers of high profile shows, so seeing his work at White Cube makes it even more special. His work makes you question what can be seen and what cannot be seen as art. 

Also in the room downstairs on the actual stairs was a fur coat which stands for wealth;  this is covered in paint, basically vandalised but then again the artist by doing this gives it value, I personally found it to be a weak piece in the exhibition; I didn’t feel it added anything more to the rest in the main rooms. 

In the same space opposite the lift there was a tribal Mask; again I didn’t find this to be a strong piece either, see pic above.The Mask was entitled 'The New Black'.To understand it you need to know the fashion magazines; there has been a lot in the fashion magazines last year about orange being the new black.

I would have preferred to see his work using hair, dirty, daily objects etc. like Untitled 1990 which was made with metal coat racks, rubber, plastic bags, tin can and a found hat, or A Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr, 1976, or the Indoor Hair Garden 1977. Over all in his work one can see also the influence of Marcel Duchamp and that of African American artist Noah Purifoy. He is interested in the circulation of goods outside of official economies which in a way resists being made part or included in an official language. In the 1970's and 80's he was at the centre of a group of black artists centred on the pioneering gallery Just Above Midtown. 

He is famous for his body prints made in the 1970s in which he covered himself with grease and pigment and then he used his own body to create marks on paper. He studied in Los Angeles at the Chouinard Art Institute and the Otis Art Institute before settling in New York in 1974. David Hammons was born in Springfield, Illinois in 1943.

Translation exhibition.

As part of the group exhibition for the first term titled: Translation I decided to put up a painting, as recently I have been working with oils and I decided to add a new element by adding sand to the painting and a translucent pink which gets affected by the change of light so with external light one would only see the blue of the painting while when the lights of the gallery are on one would see the pink tone of the painting. When I was making it I was thinking about when I was in Sardinia walking on the pink beach at night and suddenly we got hit by a storm that swept through. I liked the unpredictable element, not knowing what would happen but also remembering a good period in my life, when I was enjoying myself. At the moment I am definitely not going through a good period so it’s good to remind oneself of a place where one felt relaxed. A lot of people that saw the painting said that they found it relaxing even if it is about a storm.

At first I thought I was going to put it in the triangle space but then I tried and felt that my painting was getting lost among the largest pieces so I went back to the smaller Gallery and was looking around for a suitable space till I found one between the windows. I didn’t want to put my painting on the main wall; I wanted to do something different so I decided that it would fit perfectly between the windows and near the two works nearby which were quite colourful but different from mine. There were some interesting dynamics going on while setting up. Some students just wanted to set up with student friends of theirs, others just stuck their work in one place and never moved it, other students were discussing in groups how best show their work and kept changing the position of their work but they couldn’t do it entirely because some other students weren’t part of the game and didn’t want to move their work at all; a lot of students were just territorial and I think it was amazing that we were able to mount an exhibition at all. I was glad I found a spot that suited my painting and went well with the other works around it.

In this specific painting I was inspired by the exhibition by Turner that I saw at Tate Britain,by the way he painted storms, and his use of light. At the same time I was concerned with a much darker tone, in this case blue which cannot be read in one way, I tend to immerse myself in my painting and find dark blue deeply calming. Painting relaxes me as I have high anxiety levels and I find that when I am painting I forget everything. I can go back in time or recreate an alternate space where I can breathe, where I can have space, I don’t feel I have this in my daily life. Each painting I create has its own rhythm, space where I can be but the pink adds a hidden sparkle, maybe what am I saying with the painting is that underneath the darkness and the storm there is a light but the light is hidden - you have to look for it.

Pipilotti Rist - Hauser and Wirth in Saville Row London.

I have been focusing on my thesis lately, I haven’t had much time to blog, so I decided that if I went around to view some exhibitions it might give me the spark to start writing again on my blog. I have to say writing a thesis is like climbing a mountain; it is challenging to focus on other different writing on top of the thesis, lectures and producing work. I was walking around central London as a way to relax and by chance I found myself again at the Hauser and Wirth Gallery at the back of Bond Street; the current exhibition is by Pipilotti Rist, titled ‘Worry Will Vanish’. Inside the gallery I actually bumped into another art student in my course who is currently working with them, after having a chat with her I decided to plunge myself behind a dark curtain to see what was going on. I was asked to remove my shoes before going in. The exhibition is divided into two sections, the first section is in the entrance/reception; in the middle of it is a seating area where you can take off your shoes, opposite this is the branch of tree with a video with the artist free falling into space which I thought was great. I actually enjoyed this smaller piece better than the larger all enveloping projection. The second section is actually the main gallery, on the floors were large cushions and in front of me were two huge screens. The room was full of people lying down on the cushions, some were looking at the screens others were literally sleeping and one art student was sitting straight and taking notes. 

The Projection is based on three-dimensional animation and it’s a voyage inside the body; to tell you honestly  I didn’t realise it was three D animation -  that’s what it said in the leaflet, but to me some of the images were real and also mixed with computer generated design. On the screens images of nature and bodies were over-lapping, at one moment we were inside a nostril, at others we were in a field because the projection is so big you literally feel inside of it; all the images are done close up even of the artist herself naked; it felt new age and combined with calming music a bit trippy due to the image being so close up. Like a dance between what goes on inside and outside, images of nature and a connection to the Universe it was for a lot of viewers deeply relaxing. The Gallery Assistant did warn me that the videos might induce sleep, I told her not in my case there is no way I am going to fall asleep in here, I felt the room was to warm and I don’t really enjoy being in a dark room full of people with no air. 

The music accompanying the videos was by Anders Guggisberg and was very relaxing due to its repetitive mellow sounds. I wasn’t really surprised people were falling asleep. Pipilotti’s installation is supposed to be experienced by the audience, firstly by removing one shoes then by exploring the space inside. I was wondering what if I didn’t want to remove my shoes - would they let me into the exhibition/installation space? The removing of the shoes is for people apparently to release their social inhibition but I really didn’t feel I was releasing anything by taking off my shoes – I just felt rather uncomfortable. I kind of felt forced to do so and I didn’t like it. Because there are cushions on the floor basically you are as a viewer guided to experience the projection from a certain angle and in a certain way as you would be lying down. I felt this was manipulative but a lot of people really enjoyed the experience and the room was full, while I just wanted to make a run for the door. I was questioning the experience of lying down in a gallery looking at bodies and nature - yes it felt like being inside of a movie like when I went at the Imax to watch a Bond Movie, but I mean one can go outside and have this experience for real; at the same time the intertwining of texture, bodies, nature in the videos was excellent and the same goes for the music - you can tell she has been working in videos for a while as they are very well executed, they have pace, rhythm. 

The videos are based on auto genetic training to facilitate relaxation, developed in 1932 by the German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz, (which would do in most people but not for me - I didn’t feel relaxed at all) so that the viewer is receptive to new ideas. While I felt that I was pushed to behave and feel in a certain way most people wouldn’t mind this if is to bring relaxation, they will go happily along with it and enjoy it. Anyway I didn’t stay long so I went back to the reception where there was a small video installation entitled Stone Skyscraper (2014). I always like to check where an artist has studied and in her case she studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the School of Design in Basel. I found her videos interesting and inspiring I wish I could do more videos at University or be taught video making at University. Below is Stone Skyscraper: a miniaturised Skyscraper carved from sandstone with a video projected on the surface, colour is a strong feature in her work.