Rebecca Warren “Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?”
Matthew Marks Gallery 523 W 24th St.
This event has ended.
Warren’s first exhibition in the United States in four years features sixteen new sculptures made in her London studio. Most of them are slender totems sculpted in clay and cast in bronze. After their return from the foundry, Warren paints them in a variety of patterns and, in a few cases, adds small pompoms — a material familiar from her steel and wood sculptures but appearing here on totems for the first time. These decorative elements undercut the solemn connotations of bronze, as do the sculptures’ libidinous bulges. With titles that invoke artistic glory at one moment (Basquiat) and comedy the next (Clouseau), these works subvert the legacy of sculptural heroism while seizing it for Warren’s own ends.
The largest of these totems is over nine feet tall, while the smaller bronze sculptures resemble a pair of boulders hand-painted and topped with white pompoms. Completing the exhibition are four sculptures in steel and wood, two wall reliefs related to the artist’s earlier vitrine assemblages, and two vertical sculptures that almost match the totems in height.
Media
Schedule
from September 13, 2014 to October 25, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-09-12 from 18:00 to 20:00