George Negroponte Exhibition
Kouros Gallery
This event has ended.
Two artists in the same house make for a lot of regression. To some it may look predictably poetic, like two fried eggs. In reality it’s more of a tussle than you might imagine because energy moves unevenly through the veils of creativity. A room of two can get crowded when the audience is constantly standing by. But the dividends can be substantial. Good days are measured in moments: a glimpse into a world where nothing matters more than to really see something for what it is. A helping hand and eye can lovingly clear the way.
Making art here in Sweden is like a visual lottery ticket: you keep scraping away at the surface, hoping for some luck. Considering the odds, it’s a shot in the dark. Imagine trying to invent a new landscape while it invents you. The world here is basic; you can visually graft a Braque or Malevich onto the Swedish horizon but a Kandinsky doesn’t work. The finicky is outlawed here. So how does one proceed? On tiptoe or do you make some noise? In our house visual ideas don’t bounce off walls, they float around like enchanted spells. Our apparently divergent means are pulled in the same direction. Not some carefully calculated idea about cancellation but rather the spooky awareness that a few gestures are all that is needed.
Virva’s work is anchored by her athletic touch. Eschewing easy grace, her work is marked by a distinctly corporeal handwriting throughout. Her off-centered forms don’t dance; they trudge or traipse by you as in some social encounter. Her tough-minded elegance gets fitted together like a Finnish sauna hat. These works don’t flash; they glow in their almost hidden geometry. Their quirks and bumps are never smoothed over; their scumbled surfaces allow the world to keep seeping in. This isn’t an artist sightseeing, it’s mystery freshly articulated. Recording each and every stab at securing reality in a nutshell, Virva’s economy and color are like a daily diet of earth, bark and munched grass.
I’m in my Omega Workshop wrestling with humble beauty; manufacturing a codex on the durability of drawing. Birch plywood and wallpaper bring folk imagination to meet Donald Judd. I keep telling myself the ancient Greeks did the same thing by playing so keenly with fact and fiction. My vision isn’t naïve but my eyes are innocent. Cultural baggage moves slowly but surely and stays lodged in one’s memory. But the newness for me is everywhere and the old routines don’t necessarily work. Miraculously, while I receive and absorb all this new information, the world stabilizes just enough so that a dignified response is possible. The tautness of wallpaper focuses my attention and upends my religion. I’m carving light; releasing it from the clutch of the wall. Once again seeking out that frozen, indelible moment intime. As always, the path of art incises quotidian brambles and fog. Say good-bye aloofness.
Sweden is the land of equal footing and exhibiting with one’s spouse could become mandatory. Two making one rings true for us these days because it’s an altogether different approach to expansion. In this equation, lyricism gets reshuffled. The intimate ambience of the marriage bed diffuses the boundaries of the studio wall. And the everyday becomes work, rooted in the spirit of teamwork. It’s the most sublime test of temperament because it really takes two hearts.
--- George Negroponte February 2011
[Image: George Negroponte "Shelter" (2011) Wallpaper and paper on wood 15-1/4 x 25 in.]
Media
Schedule
from May 05, 2011 to May 28, 2011