Hasta La Ideas

Four dynamic contemporary American artists

Now in its 76th year, the bi-annual compendium has gathered a new group of 51 contemporary artists to take over the museum through 27 May. While the focus on performance has become a central one in 2012, we found a group of four artists across different mediums—from sculpture, painting, film and living installation—each dynamic in their own right. Here, just a small selection of highlights from our walk through the Whitney Biennial.

K8 Hardy

The multi-faceted multi-media artist behind the lesbian zine FashionFashion and the “feminist queer artists’ collective” LTTR presents a set of characteristically contemplative wall-mounted sculptures. The conversation around gender identity can grow noisy, but Hardy manages to cut through the chatter with a genuine, thoughtful perspective addressing fashion advertising. Besides her installations, which combine flashy and everyday products, and accessories like hair extensions oddly plucked out of context, Hardy will stage a runway show 20 May.

Dawn Kasper

Turn a corner on the third floor and Dawn Kasper’s lilting voice—along with the whirring of a spinning tennis racket on a motorized stand—carries through the hushed gallery. In the spirit of Marina Abramovic‘s seemingly hot-again performance stylings, the LA-based artist brings her Nomadic Studio Practice Experiment to the Whitney for the duration of the Biennial. Living, working and interacting with museum-goers for three months turns her creative process into a real-time, interactive installation.

George Kuchar

The venerable underground filmmaker passed away in September 2011, and the Biennial pays tribute with a series of screenings of his lauded Weather Diaries. In characteristic revelatory fashion, Kuchar’s Hi-8 films document the mundanity and anticipation of his yearly trips to the El Reno motel in “tornado-alley” Oklahoma.

Nicole Eisenman

Nicole Eisenman’s installation dominates almost an entire room. The artist’s powerful and introspective portraits are deeply striking, instantly drawing the viewer in for a closer look. The work, which at times appears crude, instead offers deep insight into the human experience through shifting lines, wild expressive characters and a feeling of general chaos combined with melancholy detachment.

Behemoth sculptures from scaled-down materials by Will Ryman

Currently at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, “Anyone and No One” is an exhibition that tests the limits of scale and complexity. The three pieces that compose the show are situated in both of Paul Kasmin’s two Chelsea locations—a first for the gallery—and thoroughly invade the spaces from floor to ceiling. We’re always on the lookout for art borne from the “painstaking process“, and Will Ryman‘s latest works—each made up of hundreds of thousands of smaller objects—mark the ultimate labor of love.

Occupying the 27th Street gallery is “Bird”, a two-ton sculpture of an aviary figure clutching a limp rose in its beak. The 12’x16′ body is made from 1,500 nails that were fabricated for the work. The bending of the nails around the head and eyes is mesmeric, the effect of combining brute materials with delicate interlacing and texture.

The 10th Avenue location opens with the prostrate body of “Everyman”, a giant human figure that stretches 90 feet along the gallery walls. The flesh is created from 30,000 bottle caps and the shirt from the blue soles of 250 boots. In the adjacent space is a labyrinth of stacked paintbrushes, whose curved, organic walls create a walking space for visitors to explore. The 200,000 brushes have been glued together to reach a height of 14 feet.

“Anyone and No One” is Ryman’s first exhibition at the at Paul Kasmin and will be on view through 24 March 2011.

Paul Kasmin Gallery

293 Tenth Avenue

515 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10011

London designer Paul Cocksedge recently completed another sculpture resembling pieces of paper caught in the breeze, although this time the leaves glow like a swarm of fireflies.

Installed in the courtyard of a hotel in Lyon, the 25-metre-long Bourrasque sculpture was completed for the city’s annual Festival of Lights.

The 200 suspended sheets were made from an electrically conductive material that lights up when a current passes through it.

Each sheet was the same size as a sheet of A3 paper and was moulded into shape by hand.

Previous paper-like structures by Cocksedge include a cloud of Corian in the hallways of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and floating steel sheets of poetry at Beijing Design Week.

Photography is by Mark Cocksedge.

The following text is from Paul Cocksedge Studio:

Bourrasque – Lyon – Fête des Lumières – 8th to 11th December 2011

A ream of paper scatters in a gust of wind, soaring high into the black winter night, every sheet glowing bright, against a backdrop of the most exquisite 17th century architecture…

The site is the grand courtyard of Lyon’s Hotel de Ville, and the occasion is the city’s annual Festival of Light, a winter tradition drawing thousands of visitors to its festive attractions.

In his installation “Bourrasque”, designer Paul Cocksedge has combined his interest in the nature and morphology of paper with a subject that has long been an important element of his design work: light…

In both scale and technique, this is an ambitious project. “Bourrasque”, measures 25 metres in length and reaches over 15 metres at its highest point. The 200 A3-sized sheets are made from electroluminescent (EL) material, a technology which has recently advanced rapidly to produce a range of sophisticated colour temperatures, in thin and extremely flexible sheets. Each of these double-sided sheets has been individually moulded by hand in London, and then assembled on site in a structure of extraordinary finesse and detail barely visible to the human eye.

Paul Cocksedge explains: “I’ve been fascinated for a long time by the various properties of light: how it emanates, how it diffuses, bends, reflects, and scatters. With these EL sheets I’ve been able to explore much further the idea of light as a flat object, as something touchable and malleable – not housed in a glass bulb or a neon strip, but an object you can bend and twist – and almost see it come alive in your hands…”

You might see these luminous sheets as documents that have suddenly escaped the confines of the offices and archives housed in this historic building, merrily fluttering on the wintry air… Equally, one might be reminded of the future of the paper medium itself, and specifically the new prototype developments in the physical shape of written media: thin, flexible tablets for downloading newspapers and magazines, perhaps even television and film.

As with all Paul Cocksedge’s work, “Bourrasque”, shows his acute sense of the role of technology in design, combined with a characteristic lightness of touch, with elegance and joy.

Une impressionnante exposition avec toutes ces sculptures et ces portraits par l’artiste Nick Georgiou, présenté actuellement à Tuscon en Arizona. Un travail composé avec du papier imprimé, et formés principalement avec des collections de livres et des journaux locaux.

Previously on Fubiz

• Book Art
• Paper Frescoes
• Wire Portraits

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Beijing Design Week 2011: London designer Paul Cocksedge installed giant pages of poetry made from rolled steel sheets outside the China Millennium Monument during Beijing Design Week.

Both Chinese and English poems were inscribed onto the curled sheets of the 20 metre-high metre-wide sculpture, entitled Manuscript.

Visitors could sit or lie down on the individual pages.

Paul Cocksedge showed another new project at the recent London Design Festival – see our story about vinyl records warped into amplifiers for smartphones here and see more projects by the designer here.

See all our projects from Beijing Design Week here, including our roundup of highlights, and see our snapshots from the festival on our Facebook page.

Photography is by Mark Cocksedge.

Here’s some more information about the project from Paul Cocksedge Studio:

Manuscript -­ An installation by Paul Cocksedge Studio for Beijing Design Week

Paul Cocksedge Studio has been selected by 2011 Beijing Design Week and the First Beijing International Design Triennial to exhibit a major installation set to be a key highlight of the festival which this year features London as its guest city.

Entitled ‘Manuscript (Seats of Poetry)’, Paul Cocksedge Studio’s sculptural design celebrates a wonderful Chinese invention, manuscript paper, the foundation of global literature and communication. It follows Cocksedge’s ongoing interest in this inspirational material, and his investigations into its morphological potential.

At 20 metres long by 6.7 metres high, the sculpture’s impressive scale also presents itself as a monument to the industrial capability of China. The individual sheets making up this complex structure are precisely fabricated and assembled by local manufacturers.

Upon closer inspection the piece is made up of rolled steel pages inscribed with poems carefully curated from Chinese and English sources. ‘Manuscript’ is about the exchange of words, poetry and knowledge between Beijing and London.

Sited on Chang’An Avenue, the main east-­‐west axis of the city, this temporary piece has been designed to be explored visually and physically by visitors to the China Millennium Monument, a cultural and events complex built to celebrate the turn of the millennium. Passers-­‐by can sit and rest on the curved sheets and absorb the pages of poetry in one of the world’s most impressive public spaces.

Aric Chen, creative director of Beijing Design Week, said of the selection process:
‘In cooperation with the British Council, we solicited nominations that were narrowed down to three very talented London designers and firms who were invited to submit proposals for the installation. While all of their concepts were strong, Paul’s brilliantly combined poetry -­‐and not just in the literal sense -­‐ with technical confidence in a way that truly celebrates design.’

Paul Cocksedge said : ‘I am very honoured to have been able to contribute this work, ‘Manuscript’, to the 2011 Beijing Design Week. This structure speaks to so many different aspects of Chinese and British history and culture: poetry and writing, the power and beauty of nature, and, of course, man-­‐made engineering and design. At heart, though, ‘Manuscript’ is simply meant to inspire people to look, listen, and make new discoveries…’

See also:

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A Gust of Wind by Paul Cocksedge	Veil by Paul Cocksedge	Drop by Paul Cocksedge