World Holes
29 Jun - 15 Sep 2018
Elisa Lendvay, Shuffle Sometimes, 2016
Aluminum, paper clay, bottle caps, gouache, acrylic paint and medium 6 × 9 × 5 in.
Courtesy of the artist
Aluminum, paper clay, bottle caps, gouache, acrylic paint and medium 6 × 9 × 5 in.
Courtesy of the artist
WORLD HOLES
29 June – 15 September 2018
Curated by Jesse Greenberg
In this project to curate an online “show” using the 450 artists currently in the White Columns online registry database without a prerogative or a theme in mind, I set out to research and browse through the database with the sole intention to organize a selection of artists who I do not know, and are new to me. Artists I could discover. Skipping through the randomizer disregarding themes, trends, current political relevance or comodifiability. It was odd and almost humorous that my attention kept stalling on works that I realized involved absence, or holes, or lack of material. In one sense this could be seen as choosing the works that were least “there” but it revealed the tenements, traditions, and traits of the substance of what makes Sculpture. I am a sculptor primarily, that is to say I work in materials rather than images. Much of the “job” of a sculptor is to prove the reasoning of the material in conjunction with the form. And yes I do mean, “prove.” Whereas a painter will never have to prove the ready-to-go reasoning behind stretching a piece of fabric on a set of wooden bars and portraying an image in the safe confines of a rectangle. A sculpture is critiqued by a longer process that involves an almost judicial court of material necessity, or material meanings.
It is in this expected chore that I found clever formal decisions on the selected artists’ part that evade this challenge, by creating formal sculptural moves that navigate the absence of material and inherently through that, evade decision altogether.
SO what does this look like?
Elisa Soliven creates grey mattered gridded bejeweled items. Some with absences that appear as deep eyeholes set in alignment with jewel like compartments. The typical human attraction trick of: shiny & colorful, has been superseded by the absence of the glitz. As the “eyehole” (portholes) gain amplified presence.
Courtney Puckett’s sculptures made of conglomerations of skinny lines crisscrossing, like spider-webs building up a scaffold, show the thought process and structural necessities the artist must navigate, much like a buildings armature at a construction site. Like drawings in space these sculptures have a frontal view, where all form disappears into material on side view.
Melissa Hopson’s work looks like the rungs of a ladder made of drips of aluminum. There is a liquid like flow form to the piece. As if the machine or container of the liquids is absent from the work, and we are left to see only the fluids form. The whole piece looks like it could unfreeze and splash into a puddle.
Elisa Lendvay’s work looks like a model for an astro-physics teaching device with some smooth arms reaching in and around itself, while two arms are made of stacked bottle caps. The combination of smooth non-specific material form and found object bare necessity exemplification shows the immediate associations materials can hold or retain.
Catherine Cullen’s piece is a straightforward bare piece of rectangular sheet metal that has been pounded dented and holed. The work exists as a moment caught in time of the fissure of the metal. As if it is foaming and degrading, and we are left with a moment capture in between its dissolvement.
E.S.P. TV has set up a TV production office in a gallery space. This space resembles the now highly popular form of office layout that new tech companies are preferring. No cubicles, no walls, no offices, trying to showcase a horizontal power distributed amongst employees. The point is to try to make all feel as equally privileged, but ends up creating a distributed surveillance system of employees amongst each other. No one can stop working, or take a break, because everyone is plainly in view of each other fearing to appear as if they are continually working.
Jesse Greenberg is an artist and curator, living and working in New York.
This exhibition is the sixth in a series of online exhibitions; this exhibition was curated from White Columns' Artist Registry.
Participating Artists Include:
Catherine Cullen
E.S.P. TV
Melissa Hopson
Elisa Lendvay
Courtney Puckett
Elisa Soliven
29 June – 15 September 2018
Curated by Jesse Greenberg
In this project to curate an online “show” using the 450 artists currently in the White Columns online registry database without a prerogative or a theme in mind, I set out to research and browse through the database with the sole intention to organize a selection of artists who I do not know, and are new to me. Artists I could discover. Skipping through the randomizer disregarding themes, trends, current political relevance or comodifiability. It was odd and almost humorous that my attention kept stalling on works that I realized involved absence, or holes, or lack of material. In one sense this could be seen as choosing the works that were least “there” but it revealed the tenements, traditions, and traits of the substance of what makes Sculpture. I am a sculptor primarily, that is to say I work in materials rather than images. Much of the “job” of a sculptor is to prove the reasoning of the material in conjunction with the form. And yes I do mean, “prove.” Whereas a painter will never have to prove the ready-to-go reasoning behind stretching a piece of fabric on a set of wooden bars and portraying an image in the safe confines of a rectangle. A sculpture is critiqued by a longer process that involves an almost judicial court of material necessity, or material meanings.
It is in this expected chore that I found clever formal decisions on the selected artists’ part that evade this challenge, by creating formal sculptural moves that navigate the absence of material and inherently through that, evade decision altogether.
SO what does this look like?
Elisa Soliven creates grey mattered gridded bejeweled items. Some with absences that appear as deep eyeholes set in alignment with jewel like compartments. The typical human attraction trick of: shiny & colorful, has been superseded by the absence of the glitz. As the “eyehole” (portholes) gain amplified presence.
Courtney Puckett’s sculptures made of conglomerations of skinny lines crisscrossing, like spider-webs building up a scaffold, show the thought process and structural necessities the artist must navigate, much like a buildings armature at a construction site. Like drawings in space these sculptures have a frontal view, where all form disappears into material on side view.
Melissa Hopson’s work looks like the rungs of a ladder made of drips of aluminum. There is a liquid like flow form to the piece. As if the machine or container of the liquids is absent from the work, and we are left to see only the fluids form. The whole piece looks like it could unfreeze and splash into a puddle.
Elisa Lendvay’s work looks like a model for an astro-physics teaching device with some smooth arms reaching in and around itself, while two arms are made of stacked bottle caps. The combination of smooth non-specific material form and found object bare necessity exemplification shows the immediate associations materials can hold or retain.
Catherine Cullen’s piece is a straightforward bare piece of rectangular sheet metal that has been pounded dented and holed. The work exists as a moment caught in time of the fissure of the metal. As if it is foaming and degrading, and we are left with a moment capture in between its dissolvement.
E.S.P. TV has set up a TV production office in a gallery space. This space resembles the now highly popular form of office layout that new tech companies are preferring. No cubicles, no walls, no offices, trying to showcase a horizontal power distributed amongst employees. The point is to try to make all feel as equally privileged, but ends up creating a distributed surveillance system of employees amongst each other. No one can stop working, or take a break, because everyone is plainly in view of each other fearing to appear as if they are continually working.
Jesse Greenberg is an artist and curator, living and working in New York.
This exhibition is the sixth in a series of online exhibitions; this exhibition was curated from White Columns' Artist Registry.
Participating Artists Include:
Catherine Cullen
E.S.P. TV
Melissa Hopson
Elisa Lendvay
Courtney Puckett
Elisa Soliven