The Bloomberg Commission: Giuseppe Penone: Spazio di Luce (Space of Light), Giuseppe Penone, The Whitechapel Gallery, 05 September 2012- August 2013

Highly recommended exhibition Spazio di Luce is an installational piece focussing on the relationship between the manmade modern world and untouched nature. The hollow cast of a tree trunk and surrounding branches leave something to contemplate. The life and soul of a tree has almost been stripped bare and reduced to a sad empty shell; the gold leaf is a precious reminder of this life and light. Complimenting the sculpture, walking into the gallery space the sound of a ticking clock adds a sense of time to an otherwise timeless subject, no tell-tale tree rings unfolding the decades. Time has been explored recently in my own art practice, and the rings in trees have been the compared sculpturally alongside tiny layered paper sculptures I have created and will dissect in half, much like the felling of a tree.





'Over the past 45 years, Italian artist Giuseppe Penone has examined our relationship to nature. For the latest Bloomberg Commission, he has created a twelve metre bronze cast of a tree, with a radiant gold leaf interior, which spreads across the columned gallery.
In 1969 Giuseppe Penone (b.1947) covered a tree in a thin layer of wax calling this seemingly simple, yet complex reflection on the passing of time All the Years of the Tree Plus One. He now recalls this poetic action by casting a layer of wax in bronze to spectacular result.
At first sight Spazio di Luce (Space of Light), could easily be mistaken for the straightforward life-size cast of a large larch tree. However, where once there was a tree now there is a void. The inside of the cast replicates in minute detail the tree's bark while the fingerprints on the outside safeguard the memory of the many hands involved in the sculpture's making.
The gleaming gold inside the tree pays tribute to the life-giving forces of light. At the same time, the fusion of bark and handprints alludes to the inseparable bond between humankind and nature.
Penone was part of the legendary group of Arte Povera, which called for a radical rethink of society through making works directly appealing to the senses and challenging common conventions of art making. the installation is accompanied by a yearlong programme of talks an events exploring the rich relationship between nature and the city.' (The Whitechapel Gallery. (2012). The Bloomberg Commission: Giuseppe Penone: Spazio di Luce (Space of Light). Autumn 2012- Whitechapel Gallery.)

If The Colour Changes, Mel Bochner, The Whitechapel Gallery, 21 October- 30 December 2012

Although this exhibition has shortly been and gone, this is definitely one to record and an artist worth making note of in my opinion. Exploring the use and display of words in comparison to meaning and colour, If The Colour Changes shows a juxtaposition between words otherwise quite ordinary and everyday alongside a disciplined action to create an aesthetic series of works, 'using a thesaurus to generate word chains that are both mordantly funny and bursting with colour.' Interesting to experience is the generated feelings and mood from reading the connected words, whether fun and playful or aggressive and angry; the colour highlighting or dulling the tone.

 'Descending from phrases such as 'top dog' and 'king of the hill' into macho mantras such as 'rule with an iron hand', the latest paintings of American artist Mel Bochner (b.1940) use a thesaurus to generate word chains that are both mordantly funny and bursting with colour.
Tracing nearly 50 years of work, this exhibition commences with Blah, Blah, Blah (2011) a huge painting that encapsulates Bochner's on-going fascination with language and with colour. Across the floor, blue squares are spray-painted onto newspapers in a fusion of geometric abstraction with current affairs. Giant crumpled photographs in lurid colours, described by the New Yorker as 'like road maps found stuffed in the glove compartment', hang around the walls.
In a reprise of Marcel Duchamp's painting Nude Descending A Staircase, a scattering of 48 inch lines occupies the Gallery staircase. At the top No Thought Exists Without A Sustaining Support (1970), is chalked onto a blackboard that appears to drip down the wall. Exuberant planes of colour leap across the walls of Gallery 9 with Two Planar Arcs (1977) and a sculpture made in vividly chromatic chunks of raw glass.
Gallery 8 is devoted to the vast Event Horizon (1998) and 'Thesaurus' paintings, including Amazing! (2011) featuring exclamations from 'awesome!' and 'groovy!' to 'gnarly!' and 'omg!', whose letters and words advance or recede according to the shade. Bochner takes us on a cerebral, optical and physical journey.' (The Whitechapel Gallery. (2012). Mel Bochner: If The Colour Changes. Autumn 2012- Whitechapel Gallery)

Similarities can be made between Bochner's work and my own in some ways, a personal interest in systems, categorising, ordering and rationalising subjects that are otherwise uncontrollable or uneasily arranged: 'Bochner shares with other artists who emerged in the 1960s, including Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson, an interest in using rationalising systems- numbers, measurements, definitions- to explore the irrational and provisional nature of being.' As part of my own art practice I have been recording my dreams for the last nine months and hope to continue recording until a year's worth has been catalogued. What I will do with the information I have gathered it yet to be confirmed although using dates, times and finding patterns within a dream cycle is something I would like to explore, and then perhaps creating a piece of work surrounding these ideas. Dreams cannot be easily understood and the juxtaposition between this and the dissecting of this information is a concept I would like to carry forward.

The Whitechapel Gallery

I actually visited The Whitechapel Gallery quite a few months ago but the subject has escaped the clutches of my blogging since then so i thought i would tell you a little bit about what i saw there. There has been a continuous exhibition running in the gallery from the 5th April 2009 until the 31st December 2012, called 'Social Sculpture', a collection of work from a multitide of sculpture based artists, my favourite being a piece of work by Tobias Rehberger, called 'Adaption 13' which was made in 2008 combining acrylic with electrical appliances to create multi-coloured columns of light which provide a 'source of beauty an illumination'. Below is the description of the work featured in the gallery:

'Frankfurt-based artist, Tobias Rehberger creates environments, sculptures, furniture and ceiling installations that are inspired by modernist art history and design classics from the 1960s and 1970s. Playful and interactive, his installations and objects are often dependent on the active participation of his audience. 'Adaption 13' is a series of lamps, which reverse the standard process of works being built from model forms. Rehberger has taken a large-scale model as the basis for his small-scale lamps. The model is the cafeteria at Suddeutsche Zeitung Verlag, Munich, for which Rehberger designed a large centrally-located block, made of different coloured acrylic panels and illuminated from behind. The brightness of the acrylic wall changes according to the information stream that runs through the building's Electronic Data Processing system, and it is this design feature which the artist has distilled for his lamp series.'

I took some photos od the work which are shown below, in some of the photos i took away the focus from the photograph so as just to portray the 'auras' of coloured light and the contrasting colours which appear beautifully in each lamp.