Hasta La Ideas

Master jeweler applies her metalsmithing talent to sculpture

Massachusetts-born beauty Jill Platner, known for the beautifully organic forms of her exquisite jewelry, has always yearned to apply her metal-manipulating skills to her passion for sculpture. This week, realizing the career-long dream, she opened a month-long show of her sculptural work in NYC.

Platner discovered her love of metal working in NYC while attending the Parson’s School of Design, getting into the jewelry business as a way to accumulate enough cash to make sculptural pieces. Years later, operating out of the same Soho space, she’s managed to create a fantastic installation. Produced under an ambitious timeline, the project started three months ago when Platner rallied a team of friends and colleagues to produce the series of pieces, a play on scale following the form of many of her well-known jewelry designs.

Resulting sculptures, constructed from steel, copper and bronze, resonate with Platner’s strong, elegant style. The hearty, interactive pieces are meant to live either indoors or out and, like her jewelry, beg to be touched. In the gallery setting, the dramatic installation uses harsh light to cast shadows across and through the pieces, creating silhouettes almost as enchanting at the work itself.

Check out the installation at 111 Crosby street in New York City (next door to Platner’s store) from now until the 31 May 2011; it is open daily to the public from noon to 5pm.

Insight from Charlotte Perriand’s photography on the design legend’s life and work

Even design dilettantes will know Charlotte Perriand as a famous architect, pioneer of 20th-century interiors design and as the designer behind some of Le Corbusier’s most iconic furniture. But taking on a less-known side of the legend, the exhibition “From Photography to Design” at Paris’ Le Petit Palais explores her creation process, narrowing in on her body of photographic work.

Ordered by Le Corbusier himself, Perriand began using photography for her preliminary studies before moving on to the still images as a means to observe the “laws of nature,” and the urban context in which she found ideas for her experiments with forms, materials and spatial arrangements. The exhibit consists of beautiful photographs—of natural objects like driftwood, bones, stumps and stones, as well as compressed metals and other industrial fragments sourced from scrap metal dealers—shown side by side furniture pieces inspired by the shapes or materials pictured. Suggestive of the muse Perriand found in nature, a method she called “the shapes lab,” examples include a smooth round pebble found on North Sea shores that gave way to the organic forms of her wooden tables.

This approach led to efficient, ergonomic and outstandingly simple work, explained by Perriand’s assertion, “beauty must come out of rational organization of elements; it doesn’t need any additional decoration.” She always kept it simple, proving that less is more, in particular when it came to the materials that defined her career. Equating wood and iron used in her furniture with cement in architecture, Perriand established the tradition of the “machine age” aesthetic with minimal, bent chrome steel tube and leather furniture.

Perriand’s photographs bear the mark of her distinct approach to modernism too. Though beautifully black and white and minimal, pictures of simple objects—such as an ice cube lit up by a sunbeam, fishing nets and boat sails or crackled desert earth—feel warm and feminine. A collecter of everyday objects from Japan, she saw no hierarchy among things; from the most humble to the most complex and sophisticated, they all deserve the same attention. The result of her democratic designs were pieces of furniture that she said were made for people to live in and be comfortable, rather than reflections of her own behaviors.

She designed her famous series of relaxing chairs (chaise lounges and swivel chairs currently in production by Cassina) after observing relaxing bodies. In the show the ergonomic seating is displayed along with the photographs she took of dozens of portraits of resting people, including lying-down fishermen in ports, a Corsican grandmother at siesta, or friends napping on tree branches.

Drawn to social commitment, the exhibition also takes a look at the survey she made of slums and other poor unsanitary areas in Paris in the early ’30s, helping to drive home a central point of the show. Positioned, as the major part of it is, within the permanent collection of the museum consists in dispatching Perriand’s unassuming pieces of furnitures among Louis the XVIth or older historical pieces from the permanent collection.

The strategy, introduced by the Louvre museum’s new initiative inviting contemporary artists to play with the permanent collections, isn’t just a smart way to have the permanent collection re-visited. In this case, the move elegantly highlights how starkly different Perriand’s populist style and influence was from the past—and how similar it is to today.

Images at the top: “Banquette Tokyo” 1954, © AChP_ADAGP, Paris 201; “Arête de Poisson” 1933, © AChP_ADAGP, Paris 2011

The Lisson Gallery in London are preparing an exhibition of work by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who is still missing after being detained by authorities at Beijing airport on 3 April.

Above: Moon Chest, 2008. Huanghuali wood, 81 pieces, 320 x 160 x 80 cm. Image is copyright Mori Art Museum, courtesy of the artist

Planned with the artist before his disappearance, the exhibition will present key sculptures and video projects including his Moon Chest series (above) and Monumental Junkyard (below).

Above: Monumental Junkyard, 2007. Marble, 40 pieces each 6 x 213 x 91 cm, 20 pieces each 6 x 210 x 80cm. Image is copyright Glucksman Gallery, courtesy of the artist

More information about Ai Weiwei’s disappearance can be found here.

Above: Marble Chair, 2008. Marble, 120 x 56 x 46 cm. Image courtesy of the artist

The exhibition will be open 13 May-16 July.

Above: Beijing: The Second Ring, 2005. Video, January 14 – February 11 2005, 1h 6min. Image courtesy of the artist

More about Ai Weiwei on Dezeen »

Above and top: Colored Vases, 2006. Neolithic vases (5000-3000 BC) and industrial paint. 51 pieces, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist

The information that follows is from the Lisson Gallery:

Ai Weiwei

Lisson Gallery is proud to present a major exhibition of work by Ai Weiwei. From 13 May to 16 July 2011 Ai Weiwei will present a show of sculptural and video works at Lisson Gallery. This will be a chance to view a number of key works by the artist, one of the most significant cultural figures of his generation, both in China and internationally.

Ai Weiwei successfully occupies multiple roles as a conceptual artist, architect, curator, designer, film-maker, publisher, and social and cultural critic. Following on from his landmark Unilever series commission Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern (until 2 May 2011), the show will be his first at Lisson Gallery and will be held across both Bell Street spaces.

Greg Hilty of Lisson Gallery says: “We are thrilled at the opportunity to bring to a UK public a selection of key works that demonstrate the range and sensibility of Ai Weiwei. Beautifully crafted, conceptually acute, poetically resonant, these works provide a concise overview of his concerns as an artist.”

In many ways deeply political, Ai Weiwei’s work explores the tension in ideology, what he describes “as being between a more interesting state of mind and a more dreadful state of mind. The artist should be for the interesting against the dreadful.” Using a variety of formal languages with both traditional and innovative methods of production, Ai links the past with the present and explores the geopolitical, economic and cultural realities affecting the world with humour and compassion. Described as “the best artist to have appeared since the Cultural Revolution in China” , his work can be seen as a succession of gestures critiquing both commodity fetishism and the society in which he lives.

Among numerous international projects planned for next year are exhibitions of Ai’s photographic works at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and his architectural projects at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria.

The selection of key works from the past six years was agreed with the artist at the beginning of this year.

Ai Weiwei was detained by authorities in Beijing while trying to board a flight to Hong Kong on 3 April and has not been seen or heard from since. Lisson Gallery, along with all his supporters in the UK and around the world, is alarmed by the detention of Ai Weiwei and greatly concerned for his safety.

Updated news and information can be found at www.freeaiweiwei.org. Please sign a petition started by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and signed by leading members of the international arts community here.

The studio and supporters of Ai Weiwei are determined to proceed with his planned projects. We hope you will join us to see and celebrate the work of one of the most significant living artists, cultural figures, and champions of human rights in China and worldwide.

About the Artist

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957 in Beijing, China, where he lives and works. Solo exhibitions include Stiftung DKM, Duisburg (2010); Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland (2010); Arcadia University Gallery, Glenside (2010); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2009); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2009); Three Shadows Photography Art Center, Beijing (2009); Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Cambelltown Arts Center, Sydney (2008); Groninger Museum, Groningen (2008). Group exhibitions include the São Paulo Biennial (2010); Biennale Architecture, Venice (2008); Documenta 12, Kassel (2007) and Tate Liverpool (2007).

Dates:13 May – 16 July 2011
Opening Hours: Monday-Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 11am-5pm
Location: 52-54 and 29 Bell Street, London, NW1 5DA

See also:

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Ai Weiwei at Albion Gallery	Artfarm by HHF Architects and Ai Weiwei	Sunflower Seeds 2010 by Ai Weiwei

Just days after the world watched the future queen of England arrive at Westminster Abbey in a ravishing gown by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art unveils its stunning retrospective of the late designer’s work. The spring 2011 Costume Institute exhibition, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty,” opens to the public on Wednesday, but we made our way past the rolls of red carpet, topiary barricades, controlled explosions of hydrangeas, and other careful preparations for this evening’s gala benefit to attend the press preview. While we catch our breath and decipher our notes, enjoy this virtual tour of what Metropolitan Museum director Thomas P. Campbell, a man not inclined to hyperbole, described this morning as “what might be the most spectacular museum costume exhibition ever mounted anywhere.”

Pictured above, the lenticular cover image of the exhibition catalogue. (Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, photograph by Gary James McQueen)

The title gallery features two dresses from Alexander McQueen’s spring 2001 “VOSS” collection, one a fiery combination of ostrich feathers and painted microscope slides and the other a white column of stripped and varnished razor clam shells. (Photo courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art)

“With ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ [the spring 2010 collection], Lee mastered how to weave, engineer, and print any digital image onto a garment so that all the pattern pieces matched up with the design on every seam,” says Sarah Burton in an interview in the exhibition catalogue. “That was the difficulty with the collection that followed. Where do you take it? How do you move forward?” (Photos: UnBeige)

One gallery has been transformed into a charred cabinet of curiosities, in which garments and accessories are interspersed with monitors playing footage of McQueen’s runway spectacles. Here, a balsa wood skirt from spring 1999, a headdress of metal coins from spring 2000, Shaun Leane’s “Thorn” armpiece from fall 1996, and a flutter of butterflies created by Philip Treacy out of turkey feathers for spring 2008. (Photos: UnBeige)

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Haunted houses and crime scene dioramas in a morbidly fascinating photographer’s work

Photographer Corinne May Botz’ imagery teases out the human relationship with the supernatural. In her latest show at the Kennedy Museum of Art, photos from Botz’s “Haunted Houses” series are on display as part of the collection “Shadows and Phenomena”. Shot over several years, Botz paired her photographs of “haunted house” interiors across the United States with a series of contemporary first-hand ghost stories.

The enchanting stills, inspired by turn-of-the-century spirit photographs and Victorian ghost stories, speak to the dystopian and sometimes romantic tales of discontent told by women long dead. Botz sees herself as a medium in the haunted environments, tapping her female sensitivity to the supernatural to capture eerie moments in time in hopes of unleashing the invisible nuances present there. Spiritually unfathomable and complex to some, those with curious imaginations or a touch of morbidity will find it compelling.

Another of Botz’ fantastically dark projects continuing the themes of macabre and female experiences is documented in her 2004 book “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death”. The monograph is a series of photographs of miniature crime scene dioramas built by honorary police captain Frances Glesner Lee. Lee, a wealthy divorcee, discovered the power of independence late in life when she dedicated herself to enhancing the field of murder investigation, constructing extremely detailed (down to grains of sugar on the floor) models of crime scenes to train detectives how to look for and follow clues.

“Shadows and Phenomena” runs through 19 June 2011, but if you can’t make it to Ohio the Haunted Houses book sells from Amazon, and be sure to check out more images from the Nutshell series in the gallery below.