Author Archives: Linnea

Xu Bing’s Phoenixes at St. John the Divine

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On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Chinese artist Xu Bing has installed a soaring pair of phoenixes at St. John the Divine. The cathedral of St. John the Divine is a marvelous place to visit in itself, which I only realized when I visited  of 90- and 100-foot mythical birds last week. This impressive temporary exhibition certainly makes a visit timely. The diffuse light of the stained glass and high nave form an awesome atmosphere in which the multi-colored phoenixes melt into the soft light.
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Phoenix (2008-2010) was originally commissioned for an office building atrium in Beijing, but the project and rationale changed as the artist was inspired by the poor working conditions at the construction site to use discarded materials to create the birds. Rather than reflecting rebirth as is thought in the West or luck, power, and everlasting life in China, these phoenixes speak more directly to the social cost of rapid building in China. Looking more closely, one sees how Xu carefully formed the birds out of pipe, fans, wiring, and such to create sculptures of both aesthetic and social resonance.
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More information available on the Cathedral’s website.

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Mind the Machine

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Tristan Perch is currently on his second large wall drawing at the Georgia Museum of Art. Three drawings will stretch across one long white hallway on the second floor of the museum. When the third, final drawing is finished on September 3, 2014, the wall will be painted over. In the meantime, the wall is being drawn on not by Perch’s hand, but by a machine holding a pen. Perch programmed the machine to move around the wall to create this drawing as the pen in weighted down by a clip and gravity from a long wire. The artist, who also works in electronic sound art, is interested in the balance and interaction between the code (his program for the pen’s path on the wall) and physics (how it actually manifests in the environment). It certainly takes automatic drawing to the next level, although rather than stemming from the unconscious this stems from a programmed computer chip.

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Strange Fruit: Arcimboldo-style Heads at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens

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The Atlanta Botanical Gardens currently features four portrait busts representing Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter by contemporary artist Philip Haas towering 15 feet above its green lawns. These enormous  fiberglass Seasons are equally as bizarre as the Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-93) paintings that they derive from. Although the original format of these portraits was small and intimate, it seems in tune with Arcimboldo’s Baroque style to place them as large garden ornaments.

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The busts retain the curious mix of expressiveness that teters between exuberant and menacing. The looming size no doubt adds to the menacing aspect. Of the four, hoary and regal Winter was my favorite–rather than mere fancy, he looks like a tree come alive. Should you have a chance to visit the gardens though, a second exhibition called “Imaginary Worlds” shows you even more anthropomorphic vegetation. Large animals and such have been formed out of shaped vegetation, continuing the Baroque fantasy on the grounds. Both exhibitions are up through October.

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