Category Archives: contemporary art

Cloud Maker Berndnaut Smilde

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Nimbus II, 2012
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde has been creating clouds! (This gets a exclamation point because I love these in a very geeky way.) These temporary, artfully lighted bits of smoke and moisture are installations that the artist produced first in 2010 and earlier this year. In an statement about Nimbus (2010), the artist said: 

On the one hand I wanted to create an ominous situation. You could see the cloud as a sign of misfortune. You could also read it as an element out of the Dutch landscape paintings in a physical form in a classical museum hall. At the same time I wanted to make (for once) a very clear image, an almost cliché and cartoon like visualisation of having bad luck: “Indeed, there nothing here and bullocks, it’s starting to rain!” –Interview with Smilde.

Watch Nimbus II in action in this video to see how the artist prepares and sets off the cloud in the above photo. More of the Smilde’s work can be found on his website.

Nimbus, 2010

Bottle caps, paintbrushes, and nails: Will Ryman

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Will Ryman, of roses fame, had new work up at Paul Kasmin in Chelsea in a show that just ended. My first impression as I walked into the gallery of the large figure wrapping around the room was that it was like a large Buddha in a temple. However, this large plaster head doesn’t look nearly as serene, his blue t-shirt is surfaced with sneakers, and his glittering arms are made of bottle caps. Lots and lots of bottle caps. Everyman is like a Bart Simpson version of the Buddha.
Going under the statue’s head, the viewer walks into a new environment, a labyrinth created with high vertical stacks of paintbrushes. Like the shoes and bottle caps, there are some great textures being created here. I wish these environments came through better in photographs. The windings go nowhere in particular and turn you back around to the sleeping (dying?) figure in the next gallery.

Around the corner, a third new work by Ryman, one more suited the public display like his roses were, presides over Kasmin’s new exhibition space. Bird is made up of real and fabricated steel nails, some of them enormous.

I became more than a little fascinated by the size of the nails, and the hollow interior of the structure. The materials Ryman uses in all these installations never lose their original identity, the way the materials used by Tara Donovan do. Instead, their existence as bottle caps or paintbrushes or nails never gets lost even as through multiplication and shaping they take new, bigger forms.

Marilyn [sic] Monroe according to Philippe Parreno

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Marilyn Monroe, in preparation of a spiritual tension (5 parts) is a new work by Phillipe Parreno that was on view at the Armory at the Pilar Corrias Gallery. I typically don’t think words are used well in art pieces, but these are an exception. These dreamy images were beautifully done.

The Algerian-born artist lives and works in France. There’s a nice interview with Parreno from 2010 in the Guardian that discusses the enviorment-based works he more typically creates. Objects like these drawings are rarer for him, and he says that “‘Art is filled with things that aren’t so much objects but quasi-objects.’ What are they then? ‘Objects whose existence is dependent on their context’.” These drawings still suggest an involved story without the extensive environment he sometimes creates.

I saw more examples of the artist’s work on the Pilar Corrias website, including these (involving penguins):

We might be soulmates. 😉