El Anatsui “Trains of Thought”
Jack Shainman Gallery (524 W 24th St)
This event has ended.
Jack Shainman Gallery announces an exhibition of new works by El Anatsui. Continuing to employ his primary medium of metal in the form of liquor bottle caps, printing plates and copper wire, Anatsui transforms the material into both draping wall pieces and three-dimensional works that hover between painting and sculpture.
Throughout his oeuvre, Anatsui has focused enormous attention on the language of his materials. Through folds and twists he pushes the metal parts beyond themselves, transforming them from microcosmic elements into sutured surfaces that are at once commanding and delicately intricate. Radical in his approach to abstraction, Anatsui circumvents traditional approaches to the picture plane through shape and dimensionality borrowed from and imposed upon, the material.
Along with his use of found aluminum and copper wire, Anatsui has additionally worked small pieces of newspaper printing plates into his iconic hanging sculptures. First seen in Waste Paper Bags (2004) the printing plates, discarded by local newspapers, have been cut down to create the same visual effect as the folded bottle caps, but with added strength enabled by their thicker composition. When creased or crumpled, the printing plates contribute a new layer of complex texture to the work, creating both slashing disruptions across the surface or speckling it with an expressionist impasto.
With a career spanning nearly four decades, Anatsui’s transformation and interrogation of material endures throughout his practice. The new work, with its evolutions in chromatic statements and continuous shifts of form are exquisite manifestations of the idiom he has made all his own.
Media
Schedule
from October 18, 2014 to November 15, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-10-18 from 18:00 to 20:00