One of the best artists to render through sculpture the exploration of human and animal fusions is the American sculptor Rona Pondick; “The metamorphosis of an Object” is an original proposition of the Worcester Art Museum which offered the artist to select sculptures from the museum’s collection and confront them to her work.

Her selection goes to three different aspects of sculpture : The communicative capacity of gesture and posture, the treatment of hairs, and the effect of repetition. But before going further in the exhibition, we must explain her own process of creation, which gives birth to hybrid representations, mixing plants with human, or human with animals: She makes a mould of some part of her own body, she modifies it with high three dimensions technologies on her computer, and then molds it in bronze, stainless steel or silicone. Thus, it is  her own body that she transforms and mixes with other biological forms.

The creatures she makes have a double effect: first when we face her sculptures, an ambiguous otherness, both beautiful and repelling, calls our whole sensitivity. The fineness of the replicated skin mixed with other forms is difficult to interprete : we could advance this idea of uncanny , the expression of the familiar with something repulsive. Indeed there is one part that we know very well, like the duplicate of a hand or a face, but it is mixed with something unknown, and this transformation is frightening.  Secondly, they recall us the actual uneasiness of the scientific researches and our own fear about this close future:  the cloning, the genetically modified organisms etc… Nowadays, scientists are going so far in human and animal manipulations that bio-ethics conferences are settled in the whole world. Thus, going back to the ancient representations of human metamorphis is an intelligent way to confront the fear of the past with our own.

Besides, this echo of creations makes us pervade the boundaries of the body's universe through generations of artists, and gives us a fresh new look to old master pieces. The artist says : “I want to look at how sculpture is physical and how the physical makes psychological impact. Viewers have conscious and unconscious visceral responses to objects that they feel in their own bodies and that make psychological meaning. I am interested in looking at the way the psychological has been manifested in sculptures from all periods. When these different historic sculptures and mine are installed next to one another, there is a visual communication spoken in "body language" that needs little explanation. The sculptures start losing their historical place and take on more physical, emotional, and visceral relations with the viewer. Gestures and postures don't translate solely into symbolic interpretations particular to a culture or time period. Otherwise, why would people look at historic work?”

Parallels with ancient works is indeed very helpful to understand better both contemporary problems and art; and it seems that more and more museums use this subject to valorize their own collection, like the Bass Museum of Art with “Endless Renaissance”, and it actually brings new people to museums that are not always turned to contemporary art.
So if you want to dive into the Ovid's Metamophoses of Rona Pondick, don't hesitate, the experience is mezmerizing.

Rona Pondick was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952. After studying at Queens College, she received her Masters of Fine Arts at Yale University School of Art in 1977. Pondick gained public recognition in the mid-1980s, and since that time her sculpture and site-specific installations have been shown in important individual and group exhibitions throughout the world. Her work is included in major museum and private collections internationally. Pondick is represented by Sonnabend Gallery, New York and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg and exhibits regularly at Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston.


[Visuals: Above : Rona Pondick, "FOX", 1998-1999, stainless steel, 37 x 9 x 14", ed.5 of 6 courtesy Howard Yezerski Gallery]

The David Zwirner Gallery offers until May 9 to the artist Adel Abdessemed his three spaces to display his last works from the past two years under the name of RIO (in English, ‘River’) : Massive sculptures, videos, photographs, drawings and other original and engaged propositions lead us to a subjective encounter with the artist.

Because this exhibition is located in three different places, (519 W 19th st., 525 W 19th st., 533 W 19th st.), the viewer will travel freely through a maze like environment and meet the pieces following his own choice of direction. For once, an artist gives the spectator some confidence. The number of works with different topics is quite high, but we really feel an aim to render intimate convictions. We will here evoke some works that blew us away by the accuracy of the purpose and ingenuity of the medium used.




The first work we discovered is a face to face to “Telle mère, tel Fils” (‘like mother like son’) sixty five feet long braid of three airplanes, made of their original cockpits and tailfins, while the fuselages are reconstructed in soft felt filled with air. Beside the strong evocation of terrorism, through the vision of distorted airplanes; the title, which recalls the adage “like father, like son” but breaks the genders frontiers by linking the mother with the son, would symbolize the interweaving of the generations, whether it would be male or female. Adel Abdessemed is born in Algeria; there, the separation between genders is strict and firm, thus he affirms a strong emancipation from this tradition. Also,  the artist gives here a tender sign to his mother.

Childhood is also expressed with the "Music Boxe" (2009), a sculpture made of recycled material such as a bicycle and a steel oil barrel, which looks like a barrel organ, and displays the music of the Wagner, the Valkyrie. The contrast is total: the barrel organ evokes the sweet oldies music of our childhood we were listening to with our parents, a candy in hand; but the music of the Valkyrie, which embodies so clearly the expression of war and anger, activates then a link between childhood and War.

An other expression of anger is a black terra cotta sculpture featuring a life size burned car , lying on its side, in a sort of precarious balance. “The car had been burned, that is to say physically, stained by gas. I find fascinating the alchemy that takes place between metal, plastic, petroleum, and gasoline, all these materials that come from the earth, of which the piece is the crystallization in clay.” Said the artist in 2008.  The title, “Practice Zero Tolerance (retournée)”, refers to the new politic lead by the actual president of France who claimed no Tolerance to any act that would violate the law. One of the consequences of the politic was the riots in October 2005, where many cars where burned: a strong rebellion from a forgotten part of the society, the new generation of French issued from the immigration that were aimed at by this new politic. This black car, like it was burned one day ago and close to fall on the ground, reminds us that those people are still here, suffering from racism and discrimination, still angry…


As the artist occupies three spaces in the gallery, a lot of high quality and profound works are showcased expressing in genuine and ingenious ways many ideas such as the intimacy of an immigrant, the violent nature of both men and life…we were amazed by this strong political idea of asking to three prostitute to handwrite pages of the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. We stayed mesmerized by the film “Usine”, in which we see fight predatory surviving or destroying their close environment (three others videos are displayed, Enter the circle and Les ailes de Dieu (the wings of God).  In brief, we could only recommend to discover this fresh new New-Yorker (he moved in 2008) artist, for the first time presented in America.


Born in 1971 in Constantine, Algeria, Adel Abdessemed attended the École des Beaux-Arts d’Alger and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. He currently lives and works in New York. In 2008, MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts hosted a solo exhibition of his work, organized by Jane Farver and accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by Farver, Tom McDonough, and Pier Luigi Tazzi, and an interview with Noam Chomsky. Abdessemed recently has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy (2009), Le Magasin - Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (2008), and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2007). He recently was included in the 7th Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, Korea (2008) and the 52nd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2007). His work is in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Fondation François Pinault, Venice, Italy; Fonds régional d’art contemporain Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France; Fonds régional d’art contemporain des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France; Fundación Montenmedio Arte Contemporáneo, Vejer de la Frontera, Spain; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France.


[Visual: above : Adel Abdessemed, Telle mère tel fils, 2008, Airplanes, felt, aluminum, metal ,Image Size: 27 x 4 x 5 meters / 88.6 x 13.12 x 16.4 feet. Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery. Below, Adel Abdessemed, Prostitute, 2008, two manuscripts of the Koran, three manuscripts of the Bible, three manuscripts of the Torah 3 plexiglass boxes inside paper shopping bags Image Size: Manuscripts are 11.81 x 8.46 inches Paper bags: One is 12 2/4 x 1 x 6 inches. Two are 13 3/8 x 16 3/8 x 6 inches each.Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery]

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago presents, until June 21, “Starting with the Universe”, the first major exhibition of one of the greatest American thinkers and visionary of the 20th century, Richard Buckminster Fuller.

Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts, this philosopher, inventor, teacher, architect and mathematician, decided in 1927 to always and only work for all humanity, in the global problematic of poverty, disease, and homelessness. In 1947, he started teaching at Black mountain College in North Carolyn and exposed his major invention, the principle of the geodesic dome: “the only kind of building that can be set on the ground as a complete structure--and with no limiting dimension. The strength of the frame actually increases in ratio to its size, enclosing the largest volume of space with the least area of surface.” This structure is based on the study of nature, precisely on plancton's organism, using their simple form as the tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of spheres, making them lightweight and stable. The patent for geodesic domes was awarded in 1954. Today, we own him over 500 000 geodesic domes.
Then he became acknowledged by the American society: in 1959, an exhibition at the MOMA of New York consecrated him. In 1967, he was chosen to be the curator for the United States Pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Montreal.

The visionary idea he had was to create and use deep technologies in order to save humanity and nature. He already had, in the late 20’s this awareness of the waste of nature's resources we were using, and was already thinking ecologically. His adage was: “More for less” : More technologies for the fewest resources. The goal was to explore at the maximum the capacities of human technologies in order to save the society from their own waste.
As part of the New England Transcendantalist, he adhered to "an idealistic system of thought based on the essential unity of the natural world and the use of experiment and intuition as a means of understanding it", in fact, he considered necessary to place faith in the integrity of a regenerative universe.

Housing, transportation, communication, cartography, he explored many different ways, inspiring himself from organic structures. They are all presented in this exhibition through a combination of models, sketches, photographs, and scale models.




 

This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, in association with the Department of Special Collections of the Stanford University Libraries

Genesis P-Orridge, lead singer of the Throbbing Gristle, seems to escape from a photograph by David Lachapelle. He is extravagantly bizarre and wears on his face traces of his artistic dimension. He reminds us Amanda Lepore, American photographer’s “muse”. Transatlantic, transgender, transsexual. The shadow behind the color. 

The venerable Hotel de la Monnaie, Paris, devotes a particularly interesting retrospective to David Lachapelle, the enfant terrible of the international photography, to May 31, 2009. Surprisingly, the exhibition begins backwards, starting with the latest works and going back to his brilliant beginning, coming back to original icons. We can quickly cut his work on 3 periods, a kind of evil trilogy, corresponding precisely to 3 different periods of Genesis P-Orridge’s carrier. Let’s take backwards from the rear and go back to genesis, without nostalgia. David Lachapelle, like Genesis P-Orridge, from the very beginning, understood everything. The first one on fashion, the other one on rock music. Both incarnate, on their respective domain, the application of an implacable intelligence. David Lachapelle made portraits of famous or anonymous people (Angelina Jolie in Poppy Field, Milk Maid) with an innovative and like anything grace. A style immediately recognizable, an inimitable technique, a running revolution and the brilliant application that you implement an aesthetical concept by giving to see. It’s exactly the same thing with the Throbbing Gristle: they understood that the revolution was the most astonishing on the limited framework of rock music, as a continued and contained implosion, the English band led a frightening holy war. To modify game rules, to be free under laws (well, special laws), it’s like striking down the dragon.

Sailing up the Styx, you arrive to Revelation, the mystical exploration: "the Heaven to Hell" or "Deluge" series by Lachapelle. This religious possession is equivalent to Psychic TV, Genesis P-Orridge band. He attempts the more or less spontaneous conversion of industrial adepts, implementing a quasi-ecumenical dimension of nebulous grouping around the TOPY (Temple Ov Psychick Youth). It’s time for preaching and transcendental questioning. Both wish to find themselves on a deviate and deviant faith, forswearing their sins on an artistic blasphemy. They try to show us the way, to lead us to their own after-life, to make us penetrate the vision, to open our third eye. They mostly open the sea of rupture.

Third and last movement of the evolution, the format exit. David Lachapelle explores the 3rd dimension with cardboard installations issued from his photographs and Genesis P-Orridge exhorts, exults, exists through Thee Majesty, expressing Lady Jaye’s soul. The puffy impressions of Lachapelle (Holy War) are only interesting by the poor material (cardboard) perfectly combining with his exploration of futility and fragileness. The rest, the themes (Holy War, worsened consumerism fight, redemption on lust), the terribly didactic aspect, the overrated compositions, transform Lachapelle’s latest works into monsters of inutility. Like the frog wishing to be as big as the ox, wanting to change his status, his dimension, from photographer to artist, he changes from artist to photographer. By keeping on wanting to say too much, badly, you end by spoiling the message and sinking into a devastating anything. Thee Majesty is on the same display. By keeping on wanting to say too much, badly, you end up by spoiling the message. The anything is less devastating because it stays on a musical field, even if it wants to pride itself, to ennoble itself under the metallic gildings of the Pompidou Center or comes closer to Orlanesc reasoning. Why looking after the sun when you shine so much on the shadow? They both totally mastered their art. They left us the choice, the right to reinterpret, to understand, or not, an innovative and solitarian reasoning. They walk now among others, in the middle of a crowd of famous anonymous. 

What’s salvation now? It is still fascinating to analyze the evolution of an artist on the long range, refusing hasty judgments, looking after perpetual struggle on long periods. A new phony war somewhere. Do not forget that they are still able to surprise us with real Grace moments. Talent, it’s like riding a bicycle, you never forget: the "Awakened" and "Recollections in America" series (Lachapelle becomes artist), the Part two. Endless Not and PTV3 (Genesis reminding himself he’s still able to invent the future). Maybe they can try, now, a naturally unnatural alliance. Will they dare to court disaster and create Lachapelle Ov Psychick Youth? Everything is possible with these two revered f(r)iends…


[Visuels : above, David Lachapelle, Awakened: Jesse, 2007. Photographie. Courtesy : David Lachapelle & Hotel de la Monnaie, Paris. Below: David Lachapelle, When the World is Trough, 2005. Photographie. Courtesy : David Lachapelle & Hotel de la Monnaie, Paris]

At the Robert Mann Gallery, from April 2 until May 23, you will have the chance to explore new possibilities of living turned against consumerism and pollution , through this rare, beautiful, and pure work of Mary Mattingly : "Nomadographies".

As the title says, this show talks about a graphic expression of nomadism, and makes us understand this ideal of living in deep relation with nature.
Mary Mattingly travels a lot: she draws upon them her inspiration, and brings us a sort of travelogue, between the documentary and the dream, where she succeeds to embody the idea of biosphere.

Landscape photographs of the far north with half submerged boats, portraits of people in a complete osmosis with a magnificent landscape. A recurrent object is this tall pile of cardboards attached by a cord, traveling sometime on the shoulder of a man in the desert, or on a boat on a lake, and contrasting with the landscape... a metaphor of the travel. With pure and vivid colors, characters featuring people who look like there are coming from another dimension, it is a kind a fresh air that we breathe in. A true peace is emanating from this series of images.

Apart from the photographs, we discover one installation “Everything you own including the shirt off my back” which retakes this same pattern, the pile of cardboard boxes bound with bungee cord, but this time attached to a man bicycling, with only one wheel on the ground. The balance is incredible, it really feels like he is landing from… but from where? a world imagined by Marry Mattingly, a world of recycled objects,  of non consumerism, wild globalization. where the simple is synonymous of grace.

An other fundamental piece is the waterpod model, an object resembling to a sphere, which is linked to a very important project. The Waterpod™ Project is a floating eco-habitat which is a sustainable navigable space, conceptualized and designed by the artist as a model for new form of living and DIY technologies. In May, the boat will start his course among the waters of New York Harbor. The project can be tracked on the website. A real and deep reflexion about our society is here proposed, and we can only admire her courage and determination to find other solution of living while the world's balance is collapsing.

“The Threaty of Nomadolgy”, written by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, explained how nomadism was linked to a war-machine. The work of Mary Mattingly could also be seen as her own war-machine, and this project would  thus embody her own vanishing point from this society of consumerism, designed with grace and cleverness.




Nomadographies  is  Mattingly's  second solo exhibition at the gallery. Most recently she  was shortlisted for the  inaugural   Prix Pictet  and  had  a  two-person exhibition with  Mle  Kjaergaard at  Standpoint  in  London.  Mattingly  is   also  included in the forthcoming  exhibition  "Trouble in  Paradise" :  Examining  Discord  Between  Nature  and  Society at the Tucson Museum of Art. In 2008 she was included in group exhibitions at the Palais de Tolkyo, the Neuberger Museum, and the Tessaloniki Museum of Photography.


[Visuals: Above : Mary Mattingly, In the Navel of the Moon, 2008, 30 x 30 inches, edition of 5, chromogenic, dye-coupler print mounted to dibond. , Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery.. Below : Mary Mattingly, Everything you own including the shirt off my back, 2009, dimensions variable, mixed media installation  Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery]