Tate Modern Level 2: Gyorgy Kepes.

Caught the exhibition of Gyorgy Kepes at Tate Modern. I generally go inside the Tate to see something specific – I don’t just wander around in an aimless way from room to room. On this occasion I wanted to see the work of Gyorgy Kepes who was interested in the relationship between art, science and technology.

                                        Gyorgy  Kepes - Pinterest

His photographic work covers both scientific and mechanical objects but he also took photographs of nature, he was interested in light, particularly the balance between light, space and movement. In his photographs he juxtaposed everyday objects such as bread, scraps of paper, gauze, stones, leaves and feathers, for example, creating abstract works. He was interested in capturing the different shades of light onto photographic paper see pic. below. The photographs in the exhibition are presented horizontally at eye level, and are neatly framed. The curation of the exhibition shows the evolution of his work in a linear manner.

                                        Structure Photogram, Tate Org.

Hi photographs are carefully composed, done without the use of the camera but by exposing objects to light on photographic paper. None of the images is large scale, but small to medium scale as one would expect from this typical process and that specific period. The photographs in this exhibition are all from the 1930’s till 1940’s taken at the Institute of Design in Chicago. It’s a pity that his later work was not included in the exhibition as it doesn’t show his further development through his photographs between art and science/technology. Through his work and experiments he hoped that it would help scientists find new representations for visual models. In his later years he was also concerned by the negative effect technology could have on the planet and the possibility that advanced technology could destabilize men’s biological nature with catastrophic consequences. The exhibition is cut short and it only includes works from his early period; whilst it could have been a bigger exhibition, it is a compact introduction to him and his early work for the novice. He was also part of another exhibition at Tate Liverpool titled Surreal Landscape.

                                        Leaf and Prism, Tate Org.

Throughout his work he searched for points of contacts between art and science, and he discovered this in nature as a common discourse see pic. above.

I am particularly interested in his photographs as I am currently working in photograms as well, exploring abstraction. His photograms are rather abstract and I have a keen interest in the relationship between technology and photography.  At the beginning, he didn’t see technology in itself as negative, he was experimenting. But later on he warned against unrestricted proliferation of technology. He believed science could help us see and understand the connection between the macro and the micro in the world. He was also interested in how we harvest and how we create and channel energy. His work has been acknowledge as having critical impact on the development of digital images on our digital devices.

The room with his work was located on level 2 of the Tate Modern’s East side of the building. Several people from the Tate didn’t know who he was or where the room was located. Finally I found two people from the Tate who knew at least where the East side section was after 30 minutes of searching. It is the first room as you come out of the escalator just to save you time on level 2 of the main building, I went by mistake to the west side.

Yes I spent half an hour looking for this exhibition and I realized how easy it is to get lost even in the old wing of the Tate Modern!

Whitechapel Gallery, A Handful of Dust.

With a sudden burst of energy I was able to view the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, ‘A Handful of Dust’. The exhibition is on the upper level and to get to it one has to go through another exhibition on the ground floor. The first photograph I saw in the A Handful of Dust exhibition was one by Man Ray taken in Marcel Duchamp’s studio in Manhattan where he took pictures of a large piece of glass covered in dust. Duchamp allowed dust to accumulate over his work called the ‘Large Glass’, also known as ‘Dust Breeding’ see pic. below. 

 Large Glass or Dust Breeding Man Ray, Duchamp, photo Whitechapel Gallery.

Duchamp asked Man Ray to record the progress. There is no specific subject matter or scale.  Man Ray wrote that the image through his camera lens: ‘appeared like some strange landscape seen from a bird’s eye view’ so it appears as an aerial shot, and is pervasive without a specific subject or an original sculpture. As with this photograph one can see photography’s ability to baffle the viewer’s sense of scale, which is one of the elements I am working on with my photographs. In the same period T.S. Eliot published the ‘Waste Land’ where he wrote: ‘I will show you something different from either/your shadow at morning striding behind you/or your shadow at evening rising to meet you’. Basically he is showing how dust can create fear as it pollutes our air. Man Ray describing his photograph said: ‘I would rather photograph an idea than an object, and a dream rather than an idea’. It operates on two levels both the particular and the abstract. The resulting photograph was made while they were out for lunch so with an exposure of about an hour. Between the 1920’s till 1940’s different avant-garde journals used the image in varying frameworks while making changes to the title and editing. In this way the image The Large Glass has became something else. While Man Ray’s photograph was seen as an original in his own right and was seen as a photograph in Duchamp’s case his work is a means to document the production process of The Large Glass, so his interest is in the process. There is a duality between the two. The work creates an open debate about its function and Duchamp’s intention. The Photograph raises more questions then answers for example: is it a photograph or a document? Is it about a concept or the process or both? Or is it just Duchamp’s interest in the mundane ‘dust’. Because of this I found this photograph fascinating; I kept going back and back relooking at it, I saw others doing the same.

  

Photo Pinterest

In the exhibition the juxtaposition of different works from different artists working with dust creates associations in the mind of the viewer. So dust as representing mortality, ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’. Examples of this are original postcards showing dust storms in the Midwest in America, Mussolini’s car (see pic. below), covered in dust and the aftermath of the nuclear bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. 

                                           Photo Whitechapel Gallery

On one side of the exhibition the photographs show major events such as natural disasters, images of landscape scarred by conflict see pic. below, on another side dispossession within the context of dust as contrasted with the subject matter itself. 

                   Photo by Sophie Ristelhueber - Whitechapel Gallery

Contrasting with anonymous photos, for example the woman drawing with her finger in the dust, in this case dust is outside of context, it doesn’t have an association. Does the presence of dust detract from the underlined subject matter or does it make us think more deeply through our own associations?  The curation of the exhibition creates a narrative of disparate photographs from International works of art such as Man Ray’s photograph to anonymous abstract representations of dust to actual documentation of dust. This is why it is a very well curated and well worth seeing exhibition.

My latest photograph & painting exhibitions & Wolfgang Tillmans at Tate Modern.

My most recent work has involved photography, I have been recently part of a group exhibition at Bargehouse, Oxo Tower in London follow link http://www.oxotower.co.uk/locations/bargehouse/
which was very successful  see pic below:

and I was selected to be part of a group exhibition by the Watts Gallery in Surrey that went very well, see link: www.wattsgallery.org.uk
I  have been exploring the urban space through walking and noticing the unseen. I am hyperactive and sometimes I find focusing on things can be hard in the urban environment, so carrying along my camera to record and reflect upon my walks gives me a way to focus without feeling anxious. I am finding myself fully absorbed in the process, and I can immerse myself more fully in the surrounding environment.

I have been exploring urban spaces and taking pictures of daily objects, observing the mundane, which I can then turn into abstract pieces of work thereby creating my own narrative. I am particularly interested in the distortions that can be created through the camera. With it I stare at the world. I have been practising walking at a slower pace and really paying attention to what is around me and I have been experimenting by printing the photographs on different types of paper  and on different sizes to see what the effects of this are. In the future I hope to explore new areas, to push myself and maybe go abroad and take photographs abroad.
If you are a Gallery or Magazine and you are interested in my work contact me here:
https://twitter.com/mirtaimperatori

I saw Wolfgang Tillmans work at the Serpentine Gallery in 2009. Some of the photographs in that   exhibition are also in this one at Tate Modern, but this latest exhibition is much more comprehensive.

Photo taken at Tate Modern by Mirta Imperatori. Copyright Wolfgang Tillmans.

I particularly enjoyed the photographic print of the hotel room where the bed is reflected int the TV, so you get a different perspective, see pic. above. When you first see the image you think is just a normal boring picture of a bedroom but then you realise it is much more. 

Copyright Wolfgang Tillmans

Some of the photographs look like anybody could have taken them, but there is still something beautiful in their every day ordinariness, see picture above. Nowadays unless you are Wolfgang Tillmans it would be really hard to sell them,  due to the fast progress of digital technology and everybody having a chance at taking good photographs, with affordable and efficient equipment. Everybody can be a photographer, it's a lot more competitive so you have to really distinguish yourself to get noticed.  What make Tillmans different is the way he exhibits his work, fantastically well produced, some of the photographs are framed and some unframed. 

Photo by Mirta Imperatori at Tate Modern. Copyright Wolfgang Tillmans

All through the exhibition you realise he has done a lot of travelling although I note that the brochure says he works a lot in the studio.  You can see from his more abstract work that he is also interested in creating images without the camera, just focusing on colour  so he is painting in a way, see pic below.

Copyright Wolfgang Tillmans

Many of the photographs are taken abroad, both in Europe and beyond, and this is a later phase of his work. These photographs have a market in magazines and newspapers, which made me assume that his background is in magazines. He photographs people, animals, and food; they are presented in a fragmented way so as to record what he sees without making an overall statement. I have to say the room I liked least was the one of mid-year 2000 depicting global events, for example the Iraq war.  I felt it was too fragmented and there was too much information, I could not focus long on any of the pieces  and there was too much information for me. With this specific work he is pointing at the subject of truth and fake news, and at how distortion of truth has an effect at a psychological level. It is really relevant today especially with what is going in the USA with  President Trump excluding certain media from his press conferences, and with fake news on the Internet. His work predates and anticipates all of this.

Another thing that comes out clearly from this exhibition is Tillmans' interest in social life and music,  for example the photographs taken in clubs, people gathering together for a party, music or activism.  I actually find them moving, maybe because I have never experienced being part of a music gathering. There is another section in the exhibition with portraits of individuals, friends and strangers; here the photographs peer into the subjects uncovering vulnerabilities and strengths. The Playback Room is the 2014 music installation with fun and energetic music including a bit of reggae which reminded me again of night clubs, of people gathering and having fun. With reference to freedom, here he is exploring the idea of how free we are? How much do we conform? This is given by one of the songs  playing which alluded to the series The Prisoner the science fiction British television series in the 1960's where the Prisoner is a former agent who resigns from his job and is imprisoned by a weird community which is really worth seeing. 

The Playback Room Photo taken by Mirta Imperatori, Tate Modern. Copyright Wolfgang Tilllmans.

Anyway I was just happy sitting there listening to music and resting my eyes, after  seeing so many photographs and yes thanks to Tillmans I might have been in a gathering for just a moment while listening to music or maybe I just wished I was at one of those parties depicted in his photographs. An enjoyable exhibition.

Richard Serra, Gagosian Gallery Davies Street London.

I found myself wandering in central London, looking for an exhibition on abstract photography as I have been working in photography lately, but I found none.  All the photographic exhibitions there are at the moment are figurative or landscape. There is a big exhibition coming up of Wolfgang Tillmans's photographs which I look forward to seeing at Tate Modern in February.  So I decided to view the exhibition by Richard Serra at the Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair, as his works are abstract.

I had not known there was a Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair; I knew their gallery in King's Cross - they seem to be popping up everywhere. The Gallery itself is just one room, a self contained space, with a clear front window that makes it look like a shop window.... See pic above.

Richard Serra is normally known for his large scale minimalist monochromatic works, made of lead and steal and site specific that you can't avoid, see pic above. They make you think of your own relation with the space and the work itself and ask for the viewer interaction. In this exhibition there were actually his drawings, black, monochromatic, minimalist, not large,  lined up on the only three walls of the gallery in white frames in a way that demanded attention, see pic below. Due to the small area of the gallery and the fact that you are surrounded by the work and you are not allowed to sit down as there are no benches, you have to look at the work standing upright at eye level.

His large scale work is about the intensity of mass and weight and gravity, you always get a sense of materiality, it's all about physicality even in these drawings you feel it, even if they are on a much smaller scale and the hand made paper gives it a sense of fragility, this is due to the thick layering of the litho crayons and pastel powder; some are more dense then others, they relate to each other creating  dense abstract images that draw you in; they are black but not bleak, I find them peaceful actually. I spent  quite a while looking at them.

Squared and rectangular, closely framed together, I would have liked to see next to them his large drawings in a bigger space. I could imagine him spending hours working on the drawings especially the large ones see pic below. They should also have a bigger sign outside advertising the Gallery. When I went out I bumped into a couple American tourists and they were asking me if it was allowed to go inside the gallery, and they asked me whose work it was? They weren't sure if it was a gallery or not... Which I found funny because it is free to view the gallery but by having the doors shut one might not be inclined to know it. A friendly man opened the main door  of the gallery to me straight away from inside, I felt more like I was stepping into Harrods or some expensive place where you have someone opening the door for you, but then again it is Mayfair after all.. It made me think also of how there is  a lot of money in the arts but it is not well distributed, and of how some major galleries support famous artists that brings them more money instead of having a combination of strong artists and emerging artists.

I leave you with a quote by Richard Serra which I find inspiring:

'You have to have an internal necessity. If you decide early on that you want an alternate life, no matter your success or reward, you have to stick with it'.

But I still feel that is  easier to stick with it for men than for women. Some major Galleries still represent more men then female artists, there is not a balanced ratio quota in terms of representation.

I have to say I enjoyed Rachael Withered's exhibition a while back at the Gagosian Gallery in King's Cross just as I enjoyed this exhibition of Richard Serra's drawings, I just wish there were more of them. The exhibition lasts till 17th December, do go and see it.

My exhibition with Chroma Collection in London.

I was selected to be part of the Black & White edition/exhibition of Chroma Collections.

http://www.chromacollections.org/monochroma

The exhibition took place in the Crypt near Euston station, an underground, exciting venue in central London, check link: http://cryptgallery.org
I have never been there before so it was good to discover a new place. Obviously the theme of the exhibition was to respond to Black and White, I thought this was interesting as lately I have been working in colour so I thought it would be good to stretch myself and do something different, so rather then a black and white painting which I could have done easily, instead I decided to push the boundaries between sculpture and painting with a new work that is a hybrid of the two. 

Artwork & Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

Since studying at Chelsea I have been working with found or natural materials for which I scavenge while walking around town or when I am at the beach as I have a keen interest in recycling. I was also thinking of Michael Thompson's writings in the 70's which discuss the status of art and rubbish and their relation to production and consumption. What do we keep and what do we destroy? Some of the pieces I found on the beach you could not distinguish if they were natural or not. I found this particularly interesting.

Everything is replaceable and this undermines the argument that if all parts were clearly labelled to know their origin it would be easier to recycle; clearly this is not always the case, some things are not easily identifiable, our material excesses, consumerist way of life have gone so far that we are not able to keep up with an efficient way of recycling - hence plastic items constantly ending up on our shores. Due to the work being shown indoors I was thinking more of an artist like Eva Hesse who created intimate works, rather than of Andy Goldsworthy's huge outdoor works that collaborate with nature.

Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

For this particular exhibition I decided to put together two really small pieces that I had found on the beach and give them a new life. I thought it would be interesting the reaction of viewers, could they identify with what is was made of? Would they notice my work at all being so small? Would they think this is part of the Crypt and not an artwork in it's own right at all? Would they think it's a sculpture or a painting or both? The shape of the work and the way I positioned it makes the viewer want to touch it.

My artwork was positioned by the Curators of the exhibition without me instructing them, inside an alcove. It was a good choice because it made the work even more ambiguous but I still prefer it on a white background. Originally I had put my work on a white background on a wall as you can see from second photograph from the top, while in the crypt it was put in the alcove which wasn't white so the piece could look a bit lost at first. I moved it slightly so that people could actually notice it, and not walk past it without seeing it, due to the piece being so small. I had some strong reactions from the public, people can have strong reactions even with a really tiny work.. One young woman completely pulled apart my work with her hands to understand what it was, another artist/filmmaker came up to me and she said: My God they have broken, pulled apart your work?! 

I would be pulling my hair out if that happened to my work! She said look, look what they have done! I looked at her and calmly put my work back together in it's original position; it wasn't broken luckily, despite having been pulled apart by the viewer and left that way. I said to her don't worry I am playing a trick on the viewers, it's all right and I went off for drinks, after that the curator said she was going to keep a watchful eye on the piece from now on.. I had a couple of people asking me what the work was about which I didn't really answer..

Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

There were lots of people at the exhibition (see pic above) so I had a chat in the quiet moments to some of the other artists, they were friendly and it felt more like a party than an exhibition, which was great and rare because todays art world in the Uk it's a competitive stressful environment that reminds you more of the business world rather then the arts with lots of bureaucracy, health and safety involved a far cry from the England I knew in my childhood but there are also more opportunities and places to exhibit there are just four times more people applying so you might get old and still be considered an emerging artist, lost in a sea of other artists, of invisibility but this might be good because you might be a better artist for it as you are free to do what you want that is if you have not given up...

Jeff Koons V The Guerrilla Girls.

It was really interesting to view such opposite artists as Jeff Koons and the Guerrilla Girls.

I was very pleased to actually have met in person and be able to have a chat with the Guerrilla Girls at Tate Modern. Firstly on Tuesday I went to the new Damien Hirst Gallery in London to view the exhibition by Jeff Koons.

It's a dramatic new building (see pic above) that has just won a big award, not far from Vauxhall station and Waterloo, I took N 77 bus from Waterloo to get there, really easy.

I viewed the ground floor rooms first where there were encased hoovers, some hung on the walls, one on the floor see pic above, this is  Jeffs Koons's take on iconoclasm and religious relics; if you don't have religion what you are left with is a commercial object with no intrinsic value: the Hoover as the religious icon, an unpoetic clinical object, art as provocation. In this way his show inside the Damien Hirst Gallery makes sense. The encased hoovers, underlit, were next to a bronze of a snorkel, a dysfunctional piece  as it had lost it's original purpose being so heavy made out of bronze it would make you sink. It would kill life.

In the following room there is the big balloon monkey, it's a stainless steel cast, rather monolithic where you can see yourself reflected on it. It's a huge hands off object, not  made by him with his own hands, it's about commodities, it's not a religious item but it makes you think that the artist is not there to make but to be an entertainer, it's a perfect artificial piece of work. 

In the next room there was a large ball with eggs surrounded by two large photographs of Jeff Koons having sex with his ex wife Ilona Staller=Cicciolina. In the photograph he is on top of her, depicting the dominance of men over women, we have had centuries of this shown in artworks and Jeff Koons is still promoting the male gaze by representing the sexual objectification of women which is demeaning of women, it's a distorted view of women's sexuality. I found this quite ironic, amusing even, bearing in mind Jeff Koons's personal private experience with Cicciolina, the fact that he tried to change her into the role of wife rather than pornstar. I wonder if he pays her any money for still using the same image of her in galleries? The ball of eggs is rather a comic piece, the eggs don't look like eggs, they are artificial, it's all rather disturbing, absurd, a dysfunctional piece about fertility; also one could associate the ball of eggs, with a breakfast cereal bowl due to it's shape, it's kitsch, it makes you think about the point of separation between high art and low art.

Upstairs  there are more sculptures, all artificial again, souvenir miniatures made bigger and placed on a plinth like you would do with a Donatello. What do you do with souvenir miniatures in real life? You put them on a mantlepiece, you play with them, they are generally private possessions in someone's house, so by putting them on a statue publicly in this way is playing God with them. The bust of the woman on the plinth is made of stainless steel , again it's a commercial material, it's not porcelain, he is taking the worst of kitsch and elevating it to the level of a Donatello sculpture.

In the next room there are what look like inflatables hanging from the ceiling but if you look closely you see actually that it takes a lot of work and a lot of people to make them look like that as they are painted aluminium casts and they would have to be hand painted not by him but by other artists working for him, a painstaking job. The whole exhibition spells big money, lots of people working for him, you can see this again in the last exhibition room where there was a giant play dough sculpture, and again it was perfect, artificial. His work is not - as some people have said - playful and light hearted, it is actually distopian and contrived with a kitsch comic aesthetic.

Overall the gallery itself is a great space with a cool restaurant, bar and a wall cabinet full of medicines, it is called the Pharmacy and again spells big money.

I took a bus and with the rest of the group went to Tate Modern. The skyline along Tate Modern has changed a lot for the better; I remember when it used to be a really run down area but now it's all gone upmarket.

Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

The Guerrilla Girls were on the 6th floor of the new building at Tate Modern which is a bit of a maze in itself. When I arrived on the 6th floor I really didn't know what to expect, and the first thing I saw was the department of complaints see pic below, I soon figured out that I had to write something on the boards to complain about, which I did easily. It was actually interesting reading other people's grievances, and how the board of grievances evolved. 

Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

Most of the complaints were about inequality, there were lots of complaints by women artists saying that it is a lot harder for women to get chosen in the arts still today, older women feeling invisible in society, not getting jobs, that life in London is expensive see pic below. It is rather shocking actually how women in society today are still running behind.

Photograph by Mirta imperatori

I wrote one complaint about how many companies still don't employ disabled people. I found the whole experience simple and very powerful. I sat on the tables and I wrote down my complaint, then I stuck it on the board and somehow I felt relieved, comforted, after I did it, it relieved me of my complaint, it was empowering. Other people as well were smiling when they wrote down their complaint, like their concerns have finally been noticed, they have been given a voice. It's interesting that as a society we are very opinionated but this exercise rather showed us that we feel generally voiceless and trapped in a system that is hard to change. 

Photograph by Mirta Imperatori

I was also very lucky as I had a chat with the Guerrilla Girls who were wearing gorilla masks pic above. I asked them what got them started on this and one of them said that they felt very angry and they wanted to take some action. She said emphatically to me this was not an exhibition, not an artwork, we are into action and in provoking audience participation. They also told me that at the beginning they were worried of not many people turning up, but on the first day of the opening people wrote a lot of complaints on the board. I found one particular complaint about one guy very funny as he said: he couldn't understand why the Royal Academy was showing so many of Hockney's latest portraits, he said: they are awful; and another person replied they should give more space to emerging artists. The act of writing a complaint also opened a door to discussion as several people were discussing other people's grievances and what we can do about them.
While Jeff Koons still objectifies women in his work, the Guerrilla Girls seek to empower women.
If you want to know more about Jeff Koons check:

http://www.jeffkoons.com and to find out more about the Guerrilla Girls go to:
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/#open